Eli5—Why is it that we all have different voices? I understand the idea of male and female, but I’m referring to tones. Vocal performance. Range. Etc.
In: Biology
First off, it’s evolutionary beneficial for individuals of a social species to be distinct from one another. That’s why we have different faces, hair colors, and body shape in general.
There is a *lot* that goes into making your voice sound the way it does. To start with the physical, the shape of your mouth and throat, along with the exact configuration of your vocal chords, and the shape of your chest cavity determine the bulk of how your voice sounds.
The actual sound of your voice is a mess of different pitches, harmonics, and resonations. For example, a broader chest causes resonations at lower frequencies, giving your voice a deep, rich quality. Tiny variations in the structure of your mouth and throat combined with the exact placement and structure of your vocal chords build harmonics in the higher frequencies.
Some of these characteristics are genetic, some are based on sex, and some of it is simply how your body grew. Think of it this way: your fingerprints and the creases in your hands are not genetic. These features develop physically as your body builds itself, and yet they are utterly unique to an individual, same as your voice.
Another huge component of this is simply psychology. Each person develops their own way of speaking, and it has a lot of effect on the way your voice sounds. For me, my voice goes up or down an octave depending on my mood, who I’m talking to, and the context of the conversation. I tend to use a lower register when talking to my partner or my friends, but my customer service voice is much higher. If you’ve ever heard a person switch between Chinese and English, you’ll see something similar, they tend to use an almost completely different voice in each language, because of the demands of each. This is in large part because Chinese is a tonal language; the exact pitch with which you speak carries meaning in the language.
Tl;dr: your voice unique due mostly to the physical changes your body goes through as it grows. Many of these structural changes are random because it’s important for social animals to be able to distinguish one another
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