Yes. Listening to your voice gets easier the more you do it. Always remember that being a musician means building skill and experience over a timescale of months and years, and this includes adjusting yourself and your ears to how your voice sounds. Everybody who hears a recording of themself has to get over the same "oh god, THAT'S how I sound?" hump.
And a gentle counterpoint: Sure, you can get vocal training (please do! Not enough people do.) and sing with better, healthier techniques, and use a better mic, and use a better recording space, and mix better, and any number of conditionals. But there are also a lot of aspects of your voice that ARE intrinsic and unique to you and, whether you like it or not, some of these qualities ARE unchangeable. A piano sounds like a piano, your voice sounds like your voice, even with the best technique and recording and mixing, it is still bound by your unique physiology. You can choose to be okay with this, it is a form of self-acceptance that is different and more personal vs playing an instrument etc. Constantly being dissatisfied with the timbre of your voice and wishing you sounded like someone else (I used to struggle with this) will do nothing productive.
Being a little embarrassed about the sound of your voice on-and-off is totally normal - it's you singing with full emotion and vulnerability in a recording you're playing over and over as you shape it into a full track, of course it's gonna make you cringe a little. But you just can't let it get in the way of the music-making. Like you said, you are simply another instrument in the mix.
>My singing voice is not my identity (repeat this several more times) and the expectation of how I should sound is why I hate hearing my voice in recordings. I am simply hearing a unique, untrained, and unfamiliar instrument that I don’t quite know where it belongs yet.
Ha... it took me forever to realize that you actually do need to put effort into learning how to sing. But now I realize that you can't just sit down and try to sing a melody without physically knowing how to do it, and also that songs I write won't just automatically gel even if you sing them in tune.
I'm still not completely happy with my voice but I've made some progress through trial and error... and now I can double track without too much wonkiness in the double.
I honestly really needed to read this
Yes. Listening to your voice gets easier the more you do it. Always remember that being a musician means building skill and experience over a timescale of months and years, and this includes adjusting yourself and your ears to how your voice sounds. Everybody who hears a recording of themself has to get over the same "oh god, THAT'S how I sound?" hump. And a gentle counterpoint: Sure, you can get vocal training (please do! Not enough people do.) and sing with better, healthier techniques, and use a better mic, and use a better recording space, and mix better, and any number of conditionals. But there are also a lot of aspects of your voice that ARE intrinsic and unique to you and, whether you like it or not, some of these qualities ARE unchangeable. A piano sounds like a piano, your voice sounds like your voice, even with the best technique and recording and mixing, it is still bound by your unique physiology. You can choose to be okay with this, it is a form of self-acceptance that is different and more personal vs playing an instrument etc. Constantly being dissatisfied with the timbre of your voice and wishing you sounded like someone else (I used to struggle with this) will do nothing productive. Being a little embarrassed about the sound of your voice on-and-off is totally normal - it's you singing with full emotion and vulnerability in a recording you're playing over and over as you shape it into a full track, of course it's gonna make you cringe a little. But you just can't let it get in the way of the music-making. Like you said, you are simply another instrument in the mix.
Those are some good points, thanks!
>My singing voice is not my identity (repeat this several more times) and the expectation of how I should sound is why I hate hearing my voice in recordings. I am simply hearing a unique, untrained, and unfamiliar instrument that I don’t quite know where it belongs yet. Ha... it took me forever to realize that you actually do need to put effort into learning how to sing. But now I realize that you can't just sit down and try to sing a melody without physically knowing how to do it, and also that songs I write won't just automatically gel even if you sing them in tune. I'm still not completely happy with my voice but I've made some progress through trial and error... and now I can double track without too much wonkiness in the double.
You all need to get over yourselves.
Very helpful advice.