What do you think an androgynic voice is like?

[Sangre y Leche]

I am lucky to have an androgyn voice. My voice is low by itself. When I am more to the female side, it is softer and slightly higher. When on the masculine side it is a bit deeper. This is natural for me. When I am on the phone, I can easily pass for a man. I feel very lucky with that 
I think this is all about my hormonal level. I do think that when my body produces more testosterone and less estrogens this has clearly an effect on my voice. I noticed that very much when I had thyroid problems last year.

[Shana A]

I suppose the ideal androgynic voice would not be immediately identifiable as either male or female. My natural voice is a baritone, so it probably sounds male, I tend to speak using modulation though.

zythyra

[RebeccaFog]

I suppose the ideal androgynic voice would not be immediately identifiable as either male or female. My natural voice is a baritone, so it probably sounds male, I tend to speak using modulation though.

zythyra

How do you do that? My head is weird inside. I have little control over what comes out of my mouth. It feels like my throat doesn't like to move and all sound passes through unscathed by my feeble attempts to control it.

[Keira]

Rebecca, its all about training. If you are producing your voice without thinking all your life, of course, trying to even feel the various members of the voice producing apparatus, let alone controllling it will be hard.

Singing is a good way to practice yourself to feel and get a control of the voice apparatus.

Though, sounding like a female, or male (depending which side your going for) singer is much harder than sounding female while speaking, because resonnance takes an even bigger importance than in talking. Singing in an androgyne way though is highly possible. I had an high mid-range for a male, my middle is in the higher first octave of soprano, yet because of resonnance, I don't always sound female, it takes lot more work than raising the pitch, I have to really think about what I'm doing (after a while I'll certainly be able to do it automatically, but its a long haul thing to retrain this (longer than I thought)).

So, for speaking itself, once you've got a feel for controlling your singing voice, it will much easier to control your speaking voice.

[RebeccaFog]

Rebecca, its all about training. If you are producing your voice without thinking all your life, of course, trying to even feel the various members of the voice producing apparatus, let alone controllling it will be hard.

Singing is a good way to practice yourself to feel and get a control of the voice apparatus.

Though, sounding like a female, or male (depending which side your going for) singer is much harder than sounding female while speaking, because resonnance takes an even bigger importance than in talking. Singing in an androgyne way though is highly possible. I had an high mid-range for a male, my middle is in the higher first octave of soprano, yet because of resonnance, I don't always sound female, it takes lot more work than raising the pitch, I have to really think about what I'm doing (after a while I'll certainly be able to do it automatically, but its a long haul thing to retrain this (longer than I thought)).

So, for speaking itself, once you've got a feel for controlling your singing voice, it will much easier to control your speaking voice.

Thanks, that makes sense.

[Keira]

I found this thesis which is probably the most thorough, some would say dense, exploration of voice vs social and biological gender I've ever seen.

Only read the intro's, discussion, conclusion of each chapters, its the only one
relevant to a non expert reader. You can read the general conclusion, but its hard to follow it if you haven't read the chapter discussions.

http://www.lotpublications.nl/publish/articles/000035/bookpart.pdf

One of the interesting conclusion is that masculinity can be transmitted through voice, but not femininity, which is very highly associated to the biological gender of the speaker.

Meaning, if you look in any way male, it won't matter how feminine you speak, it won't transmit femininity, only make you more undifferentiated, not more androgyne (they won't place you between feminine and masculine, but some kind of modified male). My own opinion is that this will classify you as a gay male.

So, to sound androgyne, if you are male, you have to significantly change your presentation towards the female side.

But, for a woman, its easier, since masculinity is not as typed, you can get away with a gender neutral presentation and some speach modifications.

In the article, they talk about two types of speach mods,

- Those are linked to the identified biological gender: Loudness and pitch.

(So, a woman to sound more androgyne should speak slightly louder, and at a slightly lower pitch (maybe 1/4 octave lower)).

- Those are linked to the identified social gender: loudness, pitch, tempo and harshness.

(So, a woman to sound more androgyne should slightly up the tempo, not vary the tempo too much (less variance in tempo in man than woman), have a slightly harder attack (less breathy) and less higher harmonics (this is a bit harder one to do than other parameters).

[crosswired]

Interestingly enough, when I switch from female to my male side, my voiceautomatically drops. My best friend always notices it. It sounds a lot like a boy who hasn't reachedmaturity in his voice change, and my speech patternalso switches. That came withobservation, however, of other guys. Sometimes my sister, who knows nothing of my bigendered side, gives me a funny look and tells me not to sound like a boy. Other people I meet I can get away with this male version of my voice and they don't think  a thing, I'm sure. I ONe time I was so convincing using my "male" voice, a guy on the phone I was with asked me if I was my dad's son! I should have said yes, but feeling awkward and surprised by the question, I said no, and he was so embarrassed he didn't even appologize!

Those born female, do any of you find your voice becoming more androgynous in certain ways?

Maybe a deeper, more agressive tone.

[Nero]

Tay, your voice is very girly - the pitch changes of japanese may have increased this, as a female varies in pitch more than a male one.

However...

Isn't the very point of feeling that you are an androgyn a way of escaping the feeling of 'what is an x voice'?

Doesn't a person choose to reveal themself as an adrogyn because they are too tired trying to be male or female because the androgyn is neither/a bit of both/both in one body. Isn't androgny the true 'other' bin of gender? Isn't it a little destructive to describe the ideal androgynous voice and appearance, or am I as unsucessful an androgyne as I am a male or female?

Oh baby. Yours is the true androgynic voice. A prettier sound, I've never heard.

[Jaimey]

Those born female, do any of you find your voice becoming more androgynous in certain ways?

Maybe a deeper, more agressive tone.

I have a rather low voice anyway, so I don't know that my voice lowers any.  But my speech pattern tends to be a little masculine anyway, especially if I'm angry...my word choice and tone of voice are more masculine then.  I've also noticed that when I feel more masculine, that my speech doesn't have nearly as much intonation as when I feel more feminine.  I have raised my pitch a little bit when I was trying to be a "woman".  I think for me it's more about speech patterns and intonation.  No one's ever mistaken me for a man just by my voice.  When I was a kid, I got mistaken for a boy sometimes.

...actually, now that I think about it, I can be a little monotone.  If I'm happy, I have a lot of intonation.  So yeah, I probably didn't help at all.   

[Nero]

Hi Jaimey. yeah I used to do the higher pitch thing unconsciously too. kind of like i was afraid for people to notice i wasn't a real woman.

[Jaimey]

Hi Jaimey. yeah I used to do the higher pitch thing unconsciously too. kind of like i was afraid for people to notice i wasn't a real woman.

Yeah.  Thank god that phase is over...stupid sheep trying to get us to be just like them...

[Veetje]

I think my voice is fairly andrgynous, although a bit "gay" sort of speak :S

I have been called a woman on the phone for aquite a few times and in the game I play ( WoW) people often are confused whether Im gay/girl or not when I talk over voicechat

EDIT: IS it possible to upload a file containing my voice?

[const]

My voice was called just about nearly perfect by one of my high school english teachers. Of course, I must also say that she was a little crazy. Although I won't elaborate, I will say that I believe what she said was honest. Furthermore, it gives me hope that I might actually have the ideal/ambivalent voice.

Just my little input I thought I would add.