A little update...
I started voice therapy today! I think it went pretty well. She first asked me about the voice surgery and I explained it to her in detail, she said that she was very excited to work with me and tailor this therapy to my needs. Then she asked me what it is that I wanted to work on since my voice was already passing. I explained to her all of the problem areas that I want to correct:
• expressiveness in my voice tends to diminish while around people I've known or after talking for a while
• resonance with louder voice
• weakness in voice / upper pitch range during early part of the day
• singing
She then had me stand up to talk aimlessly about something, and as I talked she felt my jaw, neck, throat, shoulders, back, and ab muscles. She then told me that I hold a lot of tension in my jaw and that I breathe kind of shallow. Apparently it could be from trying to already modify my resonance that I hold my jaw tighter because I am trying to keep my throat and mouth smaller. I wholeheartedly agree with her! Also the shallow breathing can also be attributed to subconscious changes that I have made to sound more feminine.
There is also one really interesting thing she told me about. Apparently one of her friends pursued brain imaging for the sole purpose of relating it to voice studies. One of her findings was that when people hum a low monotone note, there is very little brain activity. When someone sings a low note to a high note, all of the emotional centers of the brain light up. There is a direct correlation between using a larger pitch dynamic and being more emotionally expressive. A likely roadblock for many MtF's is from the social oppressions that males face growing up, since it is common for males to have to subdue or suppress emotions which means monotone voice and never breaking their "cool". Females on the other hand are not usually oppressed in this way, which leads to more emotional expressiveness and larger range of pitch dynamic! I thought that was really interesting and figured I would share
One other thing that she mentioned to do with the early day weakness in pitch range.... apparently vocal cords are thinner when you wake up, because they haven't really been warmed up / engorged with blood. It takes a thicker vocal cord to make a higher noise. By the end of the day, blood makes the vocal cords thicker and it is easier to maintain a higher pitch. She said that vocal cords come in all shapes and sizes, and that perhaps I had thin vocal cords to start out with. She thinks that people with thinner vocal cords tend to hit their peak voice sometime in the evening, whereas people with thicker vocal cords are good almost straight out of bed- but feel a little worn out by the end of the day.
The main goal of our therapy right now is to loosen up my jaw and relax my breathing. Really, it is to relax everything. That is going to help with every single one of my problem areas- especially singing, she said. I have been given a secondary set of relaxation / stretching exercises to do alongside of the ones from Yeson, as well as some exercises to further develop proper resonance using a louder voice!
She said that she's really happy to work with me and I'm excited to work with her! I think we will make some good progress together, and I'm looking forward to it!
