My take on working on your own stuff (I do this all the timeā¦ 
)
When you work on other peopleās music, you press play, hear their work and get emotionally involved with it.
When you work on your own music, you get emotionally involved before you press play, and that can get in the way of clear thinking.
In other words, you get drowned in your own poison, then open up threads like these. Do you know the story of the young shepherd who cried wolf?
Hereās a snippet of the vocals on the latest song Iām working on. Iāve tracked this yesterday.
No EQ/Compression/anythingā¦ straight from SM7B into my RME into Cubase:
See what you think. In the mix, I say itās going to need some workā¦
āRockā is just a label someone made up. it means nothing. Singing is singing.
I look forward to reading it. Sounds like an interesting thing to discuss. 
Ptalbot, I use to do some voiceover and when I started, it was really difficult to get used to listen to my voice coming from the monitors. It is an awful feeling. Cannot explain. I donĀ“t know if we tend to compare to othersĀ“s voice or what. Maybe we listen to our voice the whole day and when we have a chance to do a critical listening, we find a lot of defects.
In my opinion, the only solution to that is to get used to it. It is a matter of time, than you will start working with it as anotherĀ“s voice.
@ptalbot Got that. No time today, elderly mother in hospital. (no good wishes, thank you, sheās an evil cow who abused me as a child so this is duty not love).
On first listening, you sound fine BUT tentative. Now tentative MAY be what the track requires, but it wseakens what sounds like a perfectly fine voice. BUT have downloaded to get it in the studio to have a closer listen and toy with. Will get back to you.
Damned right, and I find loads of defects with my vocals. But theyāre good. And hereās the thing. Listen to raw vocals by any ātop of the chartsā singer and youāll fiond loads of defects, even in the final used track.
What Iām saying is, IMHO: 90 percent of professionally recorded vocals have many defects and yet they are brilliant.
Only about 10 per cent (maybe a lot less) singers can do perfect. Donāt aim for that, aim for the great performance that does the job.
I fear PT is being over critical of a fine voice.
Yes, I believe itās easy to be very critical of your own voice. And possibly because you are used to hear it āfrom the insideā so to speak, itās just too weird an experience hearing it as others doā¦
And yes, of course the solution is to get used to it! 
Thanks Shack! Yes, I hear you about tentative. I might try tracking it again at one point, although Iām not sure I can do better.
For now it works pretty well in the song actually, although itās still a trouble dialing the right tone in context.
I think what is difficult for me on this one is that the verses are quite low, and the chorus quite high (within my limited range 
) and I havenāt found a key that would benefit both. Right now the chorus works better than the verses. With a higher key, I would really struggle in the chorusā¦ so itās a trade off basically.
I think everyone is much more critical of their own voice and performance than anyone else would be. Have you thought about using reference tracks of either a similar singer, or your voice mixed by someone else? I use Magic AB to quickly switch over to a reference track or two as a kind of pallet cleanser for my ears.
Your voice is good and it doesnāt sound like it needs anything surgical in the EQ. If anything, you may want to use EQ to shape your voice for the mix instead of thinking of EQ as repairing anything.
Wow, this thread has certainly blossomed. Let me throw this out there: Mick Jagger.
Now that youāve thought about someone who has been making a fairly handsome living for 50 years by singing using a voice that is the equivalent of doing brain surgery with a snow shovel, we can agree that a great performance is all that matters.
Use what you have with conviction, do your best with what you have to work with, print it, and start the next one. In the long run it is the character of the performance that makes it unique, and youāre not doing opera, so let it fly.
Understatement of the century!
I trust weāve all seen this?
I had not seen this! What a SCREAM!! 
Taken BEFORE EQ and compression.
I know some folks have meantioning doubling before. I tend to record with two different mics to balance my sound out a little, but even then I donāt like my voice too much when Iām listening to it on its own, so most times I quickly drop it into the mix before doing major tweaks.
Hey, interesting idea, never occurred to me to record vocals with two micsā¦ Might have to try that!
Do you mean to use mics on top of each other? Because I would be wary of phase issues if they arenāt exactly placed. Using both could end up creating more of a mess than it would solve, wouldnāt it?
Would it be similar to using a pair of mics to record acoustic guitar, for example? One config could be to sing into a directional mic like an SM58 (or higher-end equivalent if you dislike that mic) with a condenser mic a few feet away or something. I realize I have no idea what Iām talking about here! 