How to tear yourself apart

by trusting other people's opinions over your own

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Woof guys, this is about self-doubt. For all the confidence I possess, sometimes it is nowhere to be found.

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I’m pretty steely, except when it comes to criticism of my singing voice.

I compare it to Star Wars. The Death Star is impenetrable…. unless you precisely target the one weak spot. Hit it just so and…. kaboom.

Me when you criticize my voice

I think everyone has an Achilles death star.

And the thing about the achilles death star, is that we assume other people’s opinions about it are more valid than our own.

When it comes to my singing voice, I automatically assume your opinion is right.

Interestingly, I don’t do this with anything else.

Criticize my outfit? Your problem not mine.

Criticize my writing? Fuck right off.

Criticize my singing voice? [melts into puddle]

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Back in March, I wrote a song. It came out fully formed in about 25 minutes. This was at a time when I was surfing a wave of existential horror about our current political climate. I guess you could say it is a protest song.

Normally when I write a song, I will wait until I can get with my typical producer/studio to record it, but this one felt more urgent than that.

The demo was just a guitar and my voice, but I reached out to a musician friend I met at an open mic to see if he wanted to fatten up the instrumentation a bit, which he did with a 12 string, an autoharp and a conga player.

Cool.

I then sent it to another musician friend for mixing and final edits.

This is what he sent back—

I fully trust that this comment was well-intentioned, but it doesn’t matter.

Approximately 3 minutes after I received this text at 9:15pm, I marched right down to my basement determined to sing in a different voice. I re-recorded more takes with different settings and various mic positions. I texted my friends about gear recommendations and started looking into getting a better preamp or a better microphone. I have a respectable middle-of-the-road (price-wise) condenser mic, but it clearly wasn’t good enough.

I wasn’t good enough.

Maybe I can take out a loan to upgrade to the $10,000 microphone that is the studio standard. Maybe I can record a billion more takes. Maybe if I try to sing more like Billie Eilish, or Beyonce, or anyone but myself, maybe it’ll be good. Maybe I can blow everyone away if I just keep trying—one more take—I’ll get it this time. Not quite, one more— [melts into puddle]

Prior to receiving this text, I felt like my vocal was pretty good and I was happy with where the song was headed. This text changed everything.

Later that night, I sent the mixer the re-recorded takes and he said they were much better—that maybe it was the my distance from the mic that was the problem. There was less sibilance now.

He sent the song back. I paid him.

It’s “done.”

But now when I listen back, all I can hear is the conviction that is missing in my voice. All I can hear is that its 9:15 at night and I’m tired and trying to sing better and sing fuller but also sing quieter and thinner and like I’m somebody else.

All I can hear is that its not good enough.

This is a recurring theme in my little musician life—> Feeling good about my artistry, until one errant opinion derails it all, at which point I start dog-paddling, scheming and scrambling to do whatever it takes to fix it.

Yet, I know better than to believe other people’s opinions over my own.

I know better than to let self-doubt steal the show.

I know that success comes from self-trust, above all else.

I “know” these things, intellectually, but getting my body to believe them has been an ongoing process.

I’m not going to release this song as is, because I know I have a better vocal take to share.

It’s the one from my demo.

I’m going to edit it in, my fucking self.

I recorded the demo the day I wrote it, back when the only feeling I had about the song was how urgently I needed to share it with the world.

Back before I got all in-my-head about my voice.

Because, LIFE LESSON: if you don’t pay attention to how you sound, YOU SOUND BETTER.

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UPDATE— 36 HOURS LATER:

I was still in the thick of some insecurity when I wrote this yesterday.

My husband read it and said, “it feels kind of hard to follow.” so I’m adding a little update to tie it up with bow.

With time (about 36 hours) I’ve been able to zoom out a little bit, so I wanted to share my bird’s eye view in case it helps anyone else that gets metaphorically kicked in their achilles heel.

I’ve read enough self-help books, so I can synthesize this:

What happened to me, is that a mixer gave me a comment about the quality of a recording I made, and I (because I still struggle with insecurity around my singing voice) made it mean that my singing voice wasn’t good or didn’t sound good.

In actuality, the syllables in the words I was singing came out too heavy and strong because I was singing too close to the mic. This diminished the quality of the recording.

However, instead of just sending him my demo recording track right away, I was hurt and determined to prove him wrong, so I fell all over myself trying to fix the problem by re-recording a million more takes and making way more work for myself. And the work turned out shitty because I was feeling shitty about myself.

Once my energy had lightened, a better solution presented itself. Last night— instead of trying to cobble together a new cut myself— I just emailed the mixer with my demo track and said, “hey, sorry this is annoying, but can you please just use this track on these parts. My vocal tone is so much better here.”

And of course that was fine, and it’s not a big deal, and I don’t have to make more work for myself and my singing voice is not the problem.

The lesson that I’ve taken from this, is not to try to correct mistakes or solve problems when I am weighted down with self-doubt and “gotta prove them wrong” energy.

If I give the time for my confidence to bounce back before reacting, a much better, more efficient solution will materialize.

Incidentally, I got a new cut of the song this morning, using my demo vocal, and it sounds fucking great, and I can’t wait to share it here.

<3

xxC

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Like this?

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Do My Songs Sound Better When I Hate Myself?

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I’ve also written on this subject before, but obviously not even taken my own words to heed, so I will be reading this again because old habits die real hard:

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