Psychoacoustics: What Singers and Speakers hear "in their head"
Vox fact: You live in a distortion when you sing and speak.
It’s actually called psychoacoustics and it’s how you, the individual perceives sound. This is pitch, tone, soundwave frequency, your singing voice and your speaking voice.
What you personally hear is not necessarily what you perceive is being recorded or what another person hears when you make sound. Listen to your own voicemail greeting. Does that recording of your voice sound exactly like you thought it would when you made it?
This is why 1:1 voice work is so powerful.
Having instant feedback from your vocal coach (I call it “playing tennis with sounds and shapes”) of what is going on outside of your inner hearing while you are in the act of making sound is what helps you to decipher what physical shapes you are actually making, and the shapes you will want to strive to make with your mouth to achieve the sound/texture/aesthetic you desire.
As humans, our vocal tract (the base of your throat to the end of your lips) is the only instrument with resonators that can change shape. Picture the soundhole of an acoustic guitar. It cannot change size– its static.
You create a variety of shapes when articulating vowels/consonants/words/lyrics.
Your vocal tract is a shapeshifter! So amazing, right?!
Psychoacoustics are powerful and can sway you in a direction of mistrust as you are in the process of developing your optimal physiological sound production.
Psycho, comes from the Greek word psykho = mental.
(Source: Google)
Advice I give often is not to let your “aesthetic antenne” override what you are feeling physically when you are singing/speaking (ie. if you are feeling strain in the extrinsic musculature of your neck, pain in your jaw, or grind on your vocal cords to achieve an aesthetic).
As your inner hearing develops, you’ll know which physical cues create the sonic result you want to apply to your voice as you are experiencing your own psychoacoustics, and you won’t freak out as much if you sound like a squawking parrot to yourself ;-)
Again, 1:1 in-the-moment feedback from me in our session will help you figure this out safely/effectively.
Psychoacoustics– Do you notice it in your vocalizing process? Are you flowing with it or struggling against it? Often it’s a both/and scenario.
I’m here for you and I’d love to sing with you and/or work on your spoken vocal delivery!
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