No Two Voices Are the Same

About once or twice a year, I find myself in a familiar place: doubting myself as an artist. I start to feel like I’m not good enough. Like I’ve been pretending.

Almost every time, the trigger is the same. I’ve been looking too closely at other artists—artists who are doing something entirely different from me—and measuring myself against them anyway. Different styles. Different voice types. Different artistic aims. And in the comparison, I lose sight of who I actually am.

What I forget, every time, is that different does not mean better.

As singers, our bodies are our instruments. This is a simple truth, but one that’s easy to overlook in a culture obsessed with polish, replication, and marketable sound. We don’t criticize a guitar for not sounding like a piano. We don’t expect a violin to project like a trumpet. Yet singers do this to themselves constantly—especially in an era where voices are increasingly standardized by genre, amplification, and algorithm.

Someone might say, “aren’t guitars basically the same? Shouldn’t voices, then, aim for sameness too?”

But guitars don’t all sound the same. More importantly, voices aren’t guitars.

Even manufactured instruments vary. Two guitars of the same make and model differ in wood density, age, setup, wear, and response. And still, the most decisive factor in how an instrument sounds is the person playing it. The touch. The body. The intention.

It is the same with the voice. The singer is the instrument.

A voice is shaped by bone structure, breath capacity, nervous system regulation, language, emotional history, and training over time. It is biological, not manufactured. Expecting voices to sound alike is less like expecting identical guitars and more like expecting all handwriting to look the same or all speaking voices to match.

Healthy vocal technique, especially in traditions like bel canto, does not erase individuality. It does the opposite. It removes unnecessary tension so the natural voice can emerge more fully. Two well-trained singers should never sound the same. If they do, something has gone wrong.

Comparison, especially across styles or voice types, does real damage. It turns art into a hierarchy instead of a living ecosystem. It trains us to value sounding like someone else over sounding like ourselves.

Every time I return to myself, to the voice I’ve been given and the voice I’ve trained, I feel grounded again. I remember that I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t need to create the way anyone else creates. I don’t need to inhabit a sound that was not meant for my body.

This matters greatly to me as a teacher.

Working with teens, I see how early comparison begins to hollow people out. How quickly young singers learn to distrust their own sound in favor of what is rewarded, amplified, or admired. My hope is not that they all become the same kind of singer, or even that they all pursue the same paths, but that they learn to recognize their own voice as worthwhile.

No two voices are the same. And that is not a problem to be solved. It is the entire point.

I hope they learn this much faster than I did.