🫦 changing your voice is harder than changing your mind

Why is voice training hard? Can't you just do the voice?

Speaking is hard. Changing the way you speak is even harder. I was surprised this week at how hard it is for me to maintain a slightly lower, resonant tone (which I have practiced) while giving an online lecture for an hour (my seminar on YouTube Live about building better websites).

If you've never tried voice training before, you may think, why not just speak in that different way you like better? Why can't you just do it?

But it gets really complicated. For starters, it's hard to focus and remember to do the new voice while you're also thinking about what words to say. Next is the worry that your new voice sounds fake or unusual. There's also overcoming the muscle memory of the way you've been speaking for decades. And finally, your physical throat may not be able to support these new and strange to you sounds for more than a few minutes, even if you've been practicing for months or years.

Ugh. Makes me want to cough. Maybe if I clear my throat, I can get a reset and do better.

This isn’t the first time I’ve worked on changing my voice. When I was a little kid, I made a “shh” sound instead of “sss” in words like “snake” or “business”. “Shnake.” “Bush-ness.” My parents were able to arrange a few sessions with a speech therapist for me. I was immediately able to make the “sss” noise, when prompted, but incorporating it into every word that had an “s” - that was harder. We spent most of the time in the sessions and in practice afterwards with gentle reminders to make the right sound as I practiced with various words, sentences, and reading magazine articles.

I also had a stutter. I mean, I still do, to some extent, in the same way I still have asthma and sometimes it breaks through.

Kids, including myself, weren’t that nice. I was talking with an acquaintance about another kid who stuttered a lot and how bad that was. She paused, turned to me, and commented that I, too, had a stutter. What? Me? Stutter? Oh no.

But once I heard it, I couldn’t un-hear it. I felt shame that I involuntarily repeated words. I felt this was one more aspect of my body I had no control over.

And I shamed myself into stuttering less. When I heard myself stutter, I would practice the sentence, afterwards, later, until I could get it without the stutter.

Both of these things — the “shh” and the stutter — I learned what the societally acceptable way to speak was, and I definitely used negative reinforcement to learn and change my behavior. While I wish I could have been nicer to myself, the real problem was that I applied that shame and negative reinforcement to other kids with speech differences as well. That became bullying behavior.

As an adult, I’ve learned a lot about the different ways voices can sound, and the best ways to practice speaking, from trans voice teacher Renée Yoxon. Their online classes and office hours have been so helpful, and also a great model for how to teach yourself how to change your voice in a respectful and kind way.

So I’ve been leaning into being able to speak and express myself as more important than sounding exactly the way I’d prefer. Perfect is the enemy of good. As I’m talking through how you shouldn’t expect your website to be pixel perfect, rather, it’s easier to try for good vibes, I remind myself that I shouldn’t expect my voice to be pixel perfect, either.

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Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Take care,

Rey