Yourself on tape

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Can you stand at all to listen to yourself on tape, either on audio tape, or video tape. I'm cleaning out my room in preperation for my move to Oshkosh and I ran across my old public speaking tape from 4yr ago when I first started to take college classes at the local center. I poped it in my VCR and found I could only take about 30 seconds of it before I had to hit mute on the TV.

That cant really be my voice can it????

The horror of it all..............

Yes I understand that feeling!

I usually can listen to myself without any problems, but some tapes (well, actually, they're Sound Recorder things) are too embarrassing for me to listen to. I can usually stand it if it's a really recent one (like my Sound Recorder recording of my Charmin jingle spoof), though.

Mich

I've gotten used to it over time. I think you can desensitized, but listen often, and listen a lot I encourage it... you hear sound differently.

I can listen to my recorded voice, but I have problems recognizing it as mine! It sounds very different from the outside that in the inside. I think it appears harsh and aggressive, contrary to my intentions and much to my disgust.

I hate listening to recordings of myself, but when I heard one of myself last year, I finally realised why so many people ask where I'm from, why they have such a hard time understanding me, and also why my experiment with using voice recognition software failed so badly back in high school. From a recording it just sounds so different to what I'm used to hearing of it.

Yup - I agree with you all there - your voice never sounds the way you expect it to, and generally it's a bit of a disapointment.

When I was in Grade 7 a couple of girls told me that I sounded exactley like some teacher who I've never heard of. It turned out that man was an East End Londoner. I took those girls' comments with a grain of salt until we did taped Mock Interviews in my College Programme. It turned out that I had the strongest Accent out of everybody in my class and it was the adorable London Cockney to boot.

Just thinking about London turns me on

My husband is from London. Came to America with his parents, brothers, and grandparents when he was 6 yrs old, so he really doesn't remember much. His parents and grandparents never lost their accents.

But what I really can't stand is some videos of myself (that I made with my grandparents and their handheld camera [with the exception of 1 or 2 videos]), although most of those are okay. Here's what some of these (better) videos were about:

A short horror movie (5 minutes[?] long) featuring a Freddy Kreuger picture, a spray bottle, and the world's worst excuse for a special effect (I mean that as a compliment): the guy (who was really my grandfather [Pap] in a hat) disappeared, but after I whispered "cut." It was obviously a movie.
A music video featuring my grandmother (Granny) as a "petunia."
A "commercial" for "Something," a new version of Miracle-Gro with better results (a little sapling turned into a huge maple tree overnight). "24 Hours Later" part features me as the cameraperson, along with a closeup of "Something."
"Potter Flakes"-- a series of commercials about an imaginary cereal.
A skit featuring Tommy the Talking Snowman. (It's too hard to explain what it's about.)
My version of Radio Disney's Music Mailbag.
A music video for "Solfege Blues" (a song me and my 3rd grade class had to perform) I made before I knew the tune to it. (I only knew the words, so I made up my own tune to go with them. Personally, I like my tune better.)
A (semi-)monthly video diary. Hardly anything interesting about it, though.

Those were only some of them. There were many others that I just can't remember that well.

Mich

I can't stand the sound of my voice on tape. I actually like the way it sounds when I hear myself actually talk, though. I also can't stand looking at most pictures of myself. It freaks me out.

I sound like a moron on audiotape! My voice sounds totally different on tape, compared to when I actually hear words coming from my mouth.

I don't like the way I sound on tape, and I also can't stand to see myself on video. I look and sound so awkward and slow! My brother has a digital video camera, which he uses to tape all our "family functions"- like my parent's birthday parties. I couldn't stand watching myself on those, and now whenever I see him with the camera, I just smile, and put my hand over the lens.

Yes, my mental image of myself never seems to match the real thing. I don't usually like photos, and even looking in the mirror sometimes will actually surprise me.

I have a weird phobia/obsession with mirrors because I always look slightly different each time I look (and in the dark I actually find the shadowing quite frightening),

I am not photogenic at all. If someone wants to make a picture, I always try to escape and position myself outside of camera's view! The problem is that I usually have a very stupid face on pictures.