my own voice?

I grew up in Cornwall in the 1950s. We had no TV, and pop music didn't exist. One incident stands out. In about 1957/8 my friend Roger Blewitt's dad bought a tape recorder. This was the latest must-have gadget and one day he showed me how it worked. He recorded my voice and played it back to me.

Was that really my voice? It sounded so strange. Those were the words I'd spoken but the voice was of a stranger. I couldn't get used to it. I never got used to it.
For the next fifty or so years I'd inwardly shudder when I opened my voice to sing.

I was singing in order to entertain people but I hated the sound of my voice. I thought it was out of tune, and the more I thought that, the more out of tune it became. Eventually it all came to a head when I was recording an album for a Christian record company in late 1995. Just as it had been 30 years earlier when the humiliation brought about by my inability to play the guitar spurred me on to learn to play and eventually to take lessons, so my humiliation in the studio caused me to find a voice coach and learn to sing.

I had six lessons from an operatic tenor, who gave singing lessons at his home. We'd sit in his music room and he allowed, no, encouraged his students to bring a cassette along so the lesson could be recorded. He'd take me through various exercises and scales, all the while encouraging me.
I'd then replay the tape and practice my scales as I drove around East Anglia (I was a delivery driver at the time). After a couple of months my voice was transformed. More importantly. I was transformed. My voice was still a little shaky from time to time, but I no longer inwardly winced. I learned how to warm my voice up, and not blow it out by trying to sing too loudly too soon. I felt comfortable for the first time in fifty years.

Recently my voice has changed again. Whether it was the illness I went through, I don't know, but my voice is different. I sing differently. I choose my songs more carefully. People tell me they like the sound of my voice, which is a surprise to me.