Maybe my voice is just bad
Maybe my voice is just bad
It’s a common concern among beginner voice students and inexperienced singers. Is this fear justified? Could someone have a voice that’s just inherently not good and can’t get better with training?
“Good” and “bad” are not words I usually use to describe voices, because they’re subjective, and they’re not nearly specific enough to be useful. But let’s say a “good” voice probably has these qualities and abilities:
Pleasant and consistent tone
Accurate pitch
Range of at least two octaves
Sufficient volume and projection
Agility and speed
Ability to perform desired musical style(s)
Many, many people have wondered if their voice doesn’t have the potential to be “good” - even people whose singing sounds pretty great! That’s because almost all people are sensitive about their singing. People really identify with their own voice. Any suggestion that your voice is flawed, you’re bound to take personally.
That suspicion that your voice might be “bad” has its roots in fears and insecurities deep in the singer’s mind and heart. We could definitely talk a lot about how emotionally vulnerable it is to sing and to cultivate your voice. That’s an important conversation to have - another time.
But there’s also a literal component to this concern, and that’s what I’m going to address right now.
Is it possible that your voice doesn’t have the physical potential to improve enough to be called good?
The way your voice sounds is a combination of nature and nurture. The individual, unique body you have, due to genetic and other fixed factors, plays a role in how your singing voice functions and sounds. After all, your voice is a part of your body. When you sing, it’s your muscles and tissues and bones that create the sound. This does mean that there are some boundaries to what abilities your voice can develop in terms of range, volume, timbre, flexibility.
No single voice can do every single vocal ability that’s humanly possible. A soprano voice will never hit a juicy, beautiful low C like a deep bass voice. We don’t think of sopranos as having bad voices because of that!
So yes, every voice is going to have limits.
Often, beginners are dismayed by this knowledge because they think, “Maybe I just don’t have it in me to sing well. Maybe the reason I can’t do it yet is because it’s not physically possible for me.”
They think, “I am not good at singing yet, and I don’t know how good I could ever be.”
I prefer to interpret that sentiment in a positive light. No, you don’t know where the boundaries of your potential are before you start to explore them. You could be pessimistic and think that those boundaries enclose only a very small space… OR you could take what I think is a more realistic view and think that those boundaries might be farther out than you can even imagine right now!
The unknowable nature of human potential is something I talk about a lot. I firmly believe that it’s not my place, or anyone’s, to make predictions about a person’s limits. You can read more of what I have to say on that topic in Don’t let other people determine your limits.
Many people think that you just get the voice you get, and that there’s not much that training can accomplish to change a person’s singing voice. But that’s not entirely true. Because there’s a deeper aspect of nature/nurture interplay that we often don’t consider:
Nurture can, over time, shape your nature.
Take bodybuilders: yes, they are working with the body they have, but your body grows and develops over time. Jason Momoa didn’t spend forty years on the couch and then one day decide, “I’ll go to the gym for six months and get super ripped!” If he had done that, he would not look the way he looks now. His physique is the result of a lifetime of training that has shaped the capabilities of his body.
I would be remiss not to include photos of Jason Momoa after I used him as an example…
Source: https://video.vehaber.org/bullet-to-the-head-2012-scene-vikingsaxe-battle-en,14555
This is not to say that, if you have spent the past 40 years on the couch in some figurative (or literal) way, that there’s not much you can achieve if you get up and get to work - quite the opposite, in fact. You never know how much you might achieve once you get started. There’s no shortage of TikToks showcasing former couch potatoes’ physical transformations. Your path will be different than it might have been if your life had gone differently than it has. But you should not believe that there’s no path open to you.
Accomplished singers are basically like bodybuilders; they work with the voice they have, but their training has, over the course of years, influenced the physical development of their voice.
So, to recap: yes, your voice has inherent limits, although no one can tell exactly what they might be. But vocal training will actually physically change your voice over time!
Are you reading this because you want to sing, but you are afraid you have a bad voice?
Please, PLEASE, just try! You are capable of more than you think. Don’t let anyone stop you, least of all yourself. And I know there’s a teacher out there who will believe in your potential and will find ways to help you grow.
