Sounding normal

Question:

I have a really bad problem with my voice. I’m a 20 year old male, and I’ve always had a “weird” voice. It is very nasally and not very deep. How do I correct that? I think part of the problem could be that I don’t talk very much, probably less than a quarter of the amount normal people speak in a day. For the past few weeks, I have been reading books aloud for about 20-30 minutes a day. I want my voice to just sound normal — how do I do this? If it was normal sounding I’d be able to have more conversations and confidence.

Answer:

I encourage you to do two things: go to a doctor who specializes in the voice to make sure your voice is structurally and functionally okay. Then work with a voice specialist — perhaps someone the doctor recommends. A trained professional needs to hear and see what is creating the issues before specific suggestions can be made. You can definitely improve because you are willing to practice and put in time to make a change, but you will need help to do that. You can read other answers I’ve given on nasality, loudness and lower pitch to see if those help you too.