My Voice - A True Story
It all began, as best I can remember, when I was a member of the school choir aged about 13.
We were singing Handel's 'Messiah' and my voice naturally wanted to harmonise so I ended up singing 3rds instead of tonic (root) notes.
I'd always loved music thanks to both my parents - but mainly my mum who encouraged me as best she could and was instrumental (no pun intended) in buying both an upright piano and a guitar for me.
I learned to play by ear as the piano teacher I had knew I was not reading from the score. I could - but only very slowly and the same is true today.
I created my own radio show with no listeners! What I mean is that I recorded my DJ speech onto an old portable cassette recorder as well as finding a way to create a 'Radio Rowe' jingle by somehow overdubbing harmonies.
I went on to sing in a local band - in part because no one else wanted to, but I could sing well enough and was able to disguise my so-called 'posh' accent by singing in the style of pretty much any artist I wanted to. I loved doing vocal impersonations too, and used to have my mum and grandma in stitches impersonating UK celebrities such as Bruce Forsythe.
The first real inkling that there might be something about my voice that people liked was when I worked for a now defunked holiday company called Intersun. I was voted 'voice of the company' and called 'Tim The Voice' by the Cardiff Branch.
Over the years several people have commented on my voice in a favourable way - many even going as far as to say that it has a healing affect.
In fact as the saying goes "If I had a pound for every time someone has commented favourable on my voice, I'd be a rich man"
So, am I? No. And here we come to the heart of the story. I always had a crippling lack of confidence and compared myself to other people.
This prevented me from doing anything much with my voice other than during a period when I was employed by an Estate Agent to do voiceovers for their property sales videos. Apart from that I was actually 'head hunted' once to do some hypnotherapy recordings
Timothy Rowe - Hypnotherapist | HypnoShop.com (selfhypnosis.com)
And also recorded one of the most popular (in its particular genre) meditation recording for the meditation app Insight Timer
But every cloud has a silver lining. That lack of confidence lead me to the world of Self-Help, Meditation, Mysticism & Metaphysics. These subjects helped me in ways that I may not have been helped had I not had lack of confidence, and I'll most likely be including some posts about these topics in the near future.
It wasn't until later in life that I happened upon one of unconscious reasons for the lack of confidence (and of course there is no one single cause for things, but I believe the following was a big contributing factor).
I had a strong need for validation and approval. I didn't realise this until I became self-honest enough to confront and accept this. Once I had realised this and integrated it it didn't matter what people said about my voice - or anything else about me for that matter. Of course, It's nice to receive a complement, but I'm able to take it in my stride these days.
So what about now? As some of you know, I'm enjoying creating the podcasts and audiobooks with Jeremy over at inanity.co.uk
I've decided to 'put myself out there' a bit, and much as a I loathe self-promotion and social media in general, I have a fair idea about how I can best focus my attention and set the wheels in motion.
Thanks for listening. :)