Are you still able to sing?

[lauren3]

I love to sing. It's not something I do professionally or anything remotely close to that.. Just generally throughout the day I'll sing to myself, or sing along to a favourite song - especially when I'm driving around in my car  . Music and singing to me are really special and a great expression of self.

What I'm afraid of (and I know it sounds a lil silly)  is transitioning and the voice training that comes with it. Is it possible to still sing and 'pass'? It's something I struggle to get my head around more than most things.. Voice therapy to me is a little intimidating somehow, but obviously necessary!

Anyone able to shed light on this?

-Lauren

[noeleena]

Hi,

For me it has not changed meds or not i can sing & was in choirs  & done acapala with out music im 64  so over 50 years of singing im a barotone & know my range & stay with in that.

As to my talking voice i can move it up or down tho im intersexed its good enough as im not trying to be other than my self , tho an interesting point my voice is  not low like   a male in the lower range,
It's around the  g a b c  ,in the first octive It not high  or to low & no one i know who i talk with are bothered or even say any thing .

Again imy voice is up in how i talk so its more as a woman any way, tho i have women friends who are lower . im not talking about tone & the deflections & what some trans go through to sound more like how a woman sounds , im just close enough to not worry about it.

Tho i'll use this as a =  my voice is more natural now as the all of who i am as a woman & how i express my self. so thats reflected as i talk.
Its about being comforable with who you are, not trying to be what your not,

...noeleena...

[cindianna_jones]

I do miss singing. I played professionally in a band for a decade or so and we did a lot of three part harmony stuff. I can sing the high parts and can sing bass.  While my speech is feminine enough to do me well, my singing just doesn't sound female. So, like many other talents and interests that have been lost along the way, I've just moved past it. I still sing when I'm alone and in the car. But not in front of anyone else.

[pebbles]

For short periods... not got the strength to do a whole song :/ I trained my voice hard to even get that.

[JungianZoe]

This is one of those areas that gives me the most dysphoria.  I have a huge voice that can consequently sing just about anything, but getting a female singing voice is proving to be one of those great impossibilities.  Singing is one of the things I love to do most in life, especially singing loud.  To think my voice will never come with me through transition... it's unbearable.

[Nurse With Wound]

I find singing along to alto female singers is a lot easier than soprano (since I'm a tenor, maybe touching baritone), but sometimes even alto will go to high and it just sounds flat when I try to sing it.

And of course it's not as full as the actual vocalists because it can't resonate the same and thus doesn't have the same harmonics. But it's not terrible, and with practice should get better.

So I guess it's just a combination of luck on how resonant your voice box is at high frequencies and practice.

[azSam]

The short answer is, Yes. Actually, I sing better now than I did before because of the voice training to find my female voice. Now I have a much greater range, and better vocal control.

I go to karaoke frequently with a bunch of trans friends, and you'd be surprised how many of them don't have any problems singing like a girl.

[hilah.hayley]

Hahah, I was never able to sing! Before I sounded like a frog, now I sound like a frog with a sore throat!

[A]

Of course. Actually, except in hard songs* I find it much harder to have a decent, natural, casual speaking voice that speaks than a female singing voice. I really wish I could record myself to show you, but clearly, my passing looks like this:

Singing voice: 9/10
Official speaking voice (the one for answering the phone at work): 7/10
Casual speaking voice (the one to talk to your friends and family, and the one you use when you feel a strong emotion, and the one you laugh with): 5/10

But since I've never had a single honest and neutral opinion on my voice, I may be wrong all the way. However, my global opinion about my voice right now is that it sounds like a young boy's, not quite a woman's yet.

However, I did ever have one comment on my singing voice, a year ago. "Was that you singing in that office a few hours ago? What was that, English? I was far and I didn't want to disrupt you, so I didn't hear all that well, but it looked good. Your voice sounds... Young. Think we could hear it?" I sadly refused out of shyness, but the fact that I have always sadly been "male" makes the "sounds young" pretty much something not far away from "female".

BACK TO THE POINT, yes, you can sing and pass. I intend to take singing lessons when I have concentration, a successful transition and money, and would love to be an "amateur singer" (not "professional", but you know, do some serious singing and perhaps gain some popularity from covers on the Internet) one day. Or a voice actress. That'd be great. And I think there is a decent chance I can do it.

Singing is fun.

*Hard songs. T_T Posting the link at the end, since the video had been auto-embedded. o_o

[apple pie]

Like Zoe I love singing, and I am desperate to be able to sing like a girl.
For about a year or so now, I would record my own singing every few days while trying to sing like a girl to practise, and then listen to it.
My computer has I-don't-know-how-many fragments of my own singing recorded whenever I felt my voice was up to it.
I am not sure because I haven't been able to find any advice on how to sing, but I think that similar to speaking, there are some characteristics to a female singing voice too more than just pitch, just like there are characteristics of the female speaking voice other than just the pitch.
So I try to emulate the characteristics... so far I think I do okay in a low range. But the higher I go, the less like a girl it sounds!!
So unfortunately it means that even though I may have the range, I end up needing to transpose down all the girl songs I want to sing (or transposing up guy songs) to sound okay... otherwise I don't sound like a girl.


(has a very strained and horrible-sounding top note... sorry it's outside my usual singing range, but I guess it just demonstrates how I start to sound horrible above a certain note)

I'm still somewhat hopeful that one day I can sound like a girl while singing high, but I am getting prepared for myself not to ever be able to sing most girl songs in the original key, because I don't seem to be making much progress at all these days...

[Gravity Girl]

If i accept that i'll sound like amy winehouse...then yes. but i was never any good at singing anyway

[Nurse With Wound]

Amy Winehouse was a pretty good singer with a nice soulful voice, though I didn't listen to her music I wouldn't complain about having her voice.

[Naturally Blonde]

I used to be a singer but since transitioning I haven't sung live or been in a recording studio for about 14 years. My musician friends are surprised I've left it this long without any involvement in music and they keep asking when am I going to return to music. I don't feel the urgency I once had to be making music but I'm now in the process of booking some studio time to record two or three new songs. I've not picked up the guitar very often in recent years but I do find my vocal range is slightly better than it was before although I have always had a very high voice anyway. In the past I have occasionally done backing vocal sessions if a band wanted some female type backing vocals and the guys couldn't do it. I would double my vocals to make it sound like two or three people.

But It's quite hard to go back into music after so long. This will be the first time I have recorded as a solo artist and I'm interested to find out how well I can produce an album on my own and what my voice will be like once the vocals are recorded.

[jainie marlena]

The short answer is, Yes. Actually, I sing better now than I did before because of the voice training to find my female voice. Now I have a much greater range, and better vocal control.

I go to karaoke frequently with a bunch of trans friends, and you'd be surprised how many of them don't have any problems singing like a girl.

that is the way it seems with me.  I sing better through the training. I have just got to thepoint were I can control my female voice still looking us it more.

[A]

apple pie, is this Chinese?

[apple pie]

Yes, but here's a Japanese one I had recorded a bit more than one year ago if you like Japanese ones... crap voice (the strength in the voice drops abruptly above E4) + crap mic + oooold song (from waaay before I was even born) + bad background (due to an extreme shift in pitch of the background with software to suit my range) though! Well, I guess it shows it used to be even worse than now...

[V M]

Are you still able to sing?

Yes and *Blushes* folks tell me I have a good voice

[Imadique]

Yes, but I never did voice training so I guess my input may not be totally relevant. I would advocate not giving it up if it's something you enjoy just for the sake of "passing" if it's something you enjoy though - transitioning is supposed to be about realising your true self rather than embracing a different disguise, no?

I didn't come to that conclusion right away, I did actually give up performing for almost a year due to dysphoria (and some bad experiences when I first came out) and I did go through a bit of a phase of trying to feminise my singing voice but it was a lost cause - I'm a rock singer, and even though my speaking voice is pretty much androgynous (I don't get any problems with it) my singing voice is comes across as male due to the need to project and generally let loose. It's always earned me a lot of compliments and works well for my material so I think I've almost made peace with it, though I'll admit I still tweak the production on any recordings to cut the lows and low mids, boost the highs and select the right mics and compression to try and feminise it a little bit. In the live setting I have no such control over these factors - SM58's are the devil.

I have I'll post two links below that show the difference between me trying to sing in a more feminine fashion and me not really caring anymore, the difference is fairly minimal. The solo link contains my E.P. from last year, it's had all the studio treatment and the vocals are fairly thin and weak - if I were to do it again I would probably do it differently. The band link has recordings from May this year and all are live (except the first song which is produced).

Coarse language and adult themes abundant.

http://www.facebook.com/officialsallyhackett - Solo

http://www.facebook.com/covertudonnoodletraffickers - Band. And the recordings are all from our first two jams or second gig - be gentle, we're a lot better now!

There is another Trans singer who has been active in Aus for a long time now, Jade Starr. If you check out her band Dreadcircus you'll hear her in the feminine mode, she seems to perform in a lot of modes these days though (very versatile).