Yeson voice feminization surgery

[Jamie D]

I agree with Shan, Abby.  Very feminine-sounding to me.

[Jennygirl]

You sound terrific, Abby 🙂 Really, you sound like a cis female to me in both examples. The timbre of your voice sounds very soft and natural.

I think you are absolutely right on about training yourself to find and use the higher pitch. I know I had to do the same. Even Dr. Kim himself told me I would have to train the brain to use the higher available frequencies *tapping his finger on his noggin as he said it*. Although I am surprised you can eek out a sound as low as 114hz- the absolute lowest I can do is about 138hz right before going to bed. I think you are still VERY early on in recovery, not even to a month yet!

Either way, when I was at 1 month and officially able to start saying sentences, I found that I was talking to people more in the range of 160hz and my voice would occasionally bottom out which sounded silly. The 210hz range was easily possible, but I had to consciously think about it for some time. This was especially pronounced when talking to people like my mother and other family members in person. Also of note, my mother who is 105lbs and 5'4" has an average pitch of 175hz and sings contra soprano. I'm like, what?!

One thing you will find is that in different situations you will find yourself using different pitches. My speech therapist explained this to me as very normal especially for women. We subconsciously somewhat try to pitch match the person we are talking to, but sometimes when the difference is so great we go the opposite way. I'll give you some examples.... When I am hanging around a bunch of guys, my voice goes up to the 210+ range and I sometimes even shock myself with how high I talk. However when I am hanging out with one of my bestie cisfemale friends who has a quite low voice of 160hz, my voice falls down to 170hz. When I talk to people I don't know, my voice jumps all the way up to 225-230hz. I've noticed that cis gendered females do exactly the same thing. It is normal to have a wide range as a female

It sounds to me like you are right on track! Keep us updated, it's wonderful listening to your examples!!

[abbyt89]

You sound terrific, Abby 🙂 Really, you sound like a cis female to me in both examples. The timbre of your voice sounds very soft and natural.

I think you are absolutely right on about training yourself to find and use the higher pitch. I know I had to do the same. Even Dr. Kim himself told me I would have to train the brain to use the higher available frequencies *tapping his finger on his noggin as he said it*. Although I am surprised you can eek out a sound as low as 114hz- the absolute lowest I can do is about 138hz right before going to bed. I think you are still VERY early on in recovery, not even to a month yet!

Either way, when I was at 1 month and officially able to start saying sentences, I found that I was talking to people more in the range of 160hz and my voice would occasionally bottom out which sounded silly. The 210hz range was easily possible, but I had to consciously think about it for some time. This was especially pronounced when talking to people like my mother and other family members in person. Also of note, my mother who is 105lbs and 5'4" has an average pitch of 175hz and sings contra soprano. I'm like, what?!

One thing you will find is that in different situations you will find yourself using different pitches. My speech therapist explained this to me as very normal especially for women. We subconsciously somewhat try to pitch match the person we are talking to, but sometimes when the difference is so great we go the opposite way. I'll give you some examples.... When I am hanging around a bunch of guys, my voice goes up to the 210+ range and I sometimes even shock myself with how high I talk. However when I am hanging out with one of my bestie cisfemale friends who has a quite low voice of 160hz, my voice falls down to 170hz. When I talk to people I don't know, my voice jumps all the way up to 225-230hz. I've noticed that cis gendered females do exactly the same thing. It is normal to have a wide range as a female

It sounds to me like you are right on track! Keep us updated, it's wonderful listening to your examples!!

Thank you for this post - it's very reassuring!! And yeah I know I'm not even a month post op so I have a long way to go healing wise I'm just nervous about the passability of my new voice since I will actually be using it regularly in public in about a week.

And yeah I thought I remember Dr. Kim saying something about that as well, and it does make sense. As far as how low I can go, keep in mind my pitch started out 15hz lower than yours, and also Dr. Kim didn't tie my vocal chords up as much as yours I don't think. You said he did almost 1/2? He did a teeny bit more than 1/3 for me. I asked him and he said the 75hz average was for 1/3 so I was fine with him just doing that.

So I have a question about where you were at when you re-read the rainbow passage at 1 month (it was one month right, or was it two?) for the before/after video. Did you consciously try to raise the pitch at all or mentally were you at the point where you just naturally found a higher but comfortable pitch?

Edit: Also, you've started the vocal exercises they gave you, right? How has that been going? Has it been helpful?

[Jennygirl]

So I have a question about where you were at when you re-read the rainbow passage at 1 month (it was one month right, or was it two?) for the before/after video. Did you consciously try to raise the pitch at all or mentally were you at the point where you just naturally found a higher but comfortable pitch?

Edit: Also, you've started the vocal exercises they gave you, right? How has that been going? Has it been helpful?

Happy to give you some reassurance Abby 🙂 Yes I was consciously raising the pitch at that point but to a comfortable level. My speaking voice face to face with other people was quite different. Now the two are much closer, but my pitch when reading the rainbow passage is still quite a bit higher than my conversational voice.

As far as the vocal exercises, yes I have been doing them and yes they do help! A lot! My max upper frequency has somewhat plateaued at E5 660hz but my voice is also still doing the little crack thing when I get up that high, so I know when my vocal cords continue to regain strength I will likely be able to go even higher. Before starting the exercises, the crack was happening around A4/Bb4 or 450hz. Quite a difference!

Also worth noting though is that as pitch goes up linearly as interpreted by our brains, the difference in hz also increases. For example, the hz difference of a semitone at C3 - C#3 is 8hz. The semitone difference at C5 - C#5 is 31hz. Basically what I'm getting at is even though my max frequency has gone up by 210hz since the surgery, it's much less of a difference than it would be in lower registers. Perceived note pitch is a linear scale, whereas the relative frequency in hz is on an exponential scale.

http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html

EDIT: in case you are interested, my absolute range pre-op was D2 - C5 (72hz - 523hz). Now it is C#3 - E5 (138hz - 660hz).

[abbyt89]

Happy to give you some reassurance Abby 🙂 Yes I was consciously raising the pitch at that point but to a comfortable level. My speaking voice face to face with other people was quite different. Now the two are much closer, but my pitch when reading the rainbow passage is still quite a bit higher than my conversational voice.

As far as the vocal exercises, yes I have been doing them and yes they do help! A lot! My max upper frequency has somewhat plateaued at E5 660hz but my voice is also still doing the little crack thing when I get up that high, so I know when my vocal cords continue to regain strength I will likely be able to go even higher. Before starting the exercises, the crack was happening around A4/Bb4 or 450hz. Quite a difference!

Also worth noting though is that as pitch goes up linearly as interpreted by our brains, the difference in hz also increases. For example, the hz difference of a semitone at C3 - C#3 is 8hz. The semitone difference at C5 - C#5 is 31hz. Basically what I'm getting at is even though my max frequency has gone up by 210hz since the surgery, it's much less of a difference than it would be in lower registers. Perceived note pitch is a linear scale, whereas the relative frequency in hz is on an exponential scale.

http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html

Wow that's interesting. So if I'm understanding you correctly (I'm not very musically inclined) the perceived difference between say 125hz and 175hz is much greater than the perceived difference between 175hz and 225hz?

[Jennygirl]

Wow that's interesting. So if I'm understanding you correctly (I'm not very musically inclined) the perceived difference between say 125hz and 175hz is much greater than the perceived difference between 175hz and 225hz?

Exactamundo 🙂 6 perceptible semitones vs 4 in that case.

I'm pretty sure that not even the musically inclined pay attention to this sort of stuff. It's more apt for the physics inclined 😉

[Jennygirl]

How's it going, Abby? If my calculations are correct you've got only a few days left of limiting conversation? So eager to hear more 🙂

[Shantel]

How's it going, Abby? If my calculations are correct you've got only a few days left of limiting conversation? So eager to hear more

Me too along with everyone else!

[abbyt89]

How's it going, Abby? If my calculations are correct you've got only a few days left of limiting conversation? So eager to hear more

Yep, tomorrow I can start speaking more.

I'm still at just about a 25hz increase in my normal speaking voice since surgery. I'm hoping that it goes up (it hasn't gone up since I started recording a couple sentences each day) but at this point I'll be ecstatic if I see even just a 50hz increase. I'll give it the full 3-6 months healing time but I was maybe a little bit too optimistic about how much it would increase a month after surgery. I feel no more confident using my voice since my male range is still there and it's just as easy as ever to slip into it, which is the entire reason I sought surgery. But again, 3-6 months is the full healing time so I will reserve my final judgment until then when hopefully things have improved.

Worst case scenario it doesn't go any higher from here, and as far as voice surgeries go that being the worst case scenario is hardly a bad thing. It just means I spent a lot of money for a minor increase in pitch. But at least my voice is "fine", unlike the risks of other voice surgeries.

I'll probably be getting an e-mail from Jesse soon to send in my "after" recording. I'm not sure if I want to do it in my normal speaking voice or one where I try to raise the pitch. I'm leaning towards the former since they take your normal recording and not your feminine one for the "before" part of the video. So my normal voice went from 125-150hz and my feminine voice from 170-195. If I were to use my feminine voice it would seem like a 70hz increase but that really isn't the case.

[Jennygirl]

I think you are still well within the range of normal recovery. Maybe it's just taking your vocal muscles a bit longer to re-contract after being sutured together? I'm sure Jessie will have some answers for you. I remember she told me it was normal for patients to sound almost the same right after the procedure (sometimes even somewhat mono-tone), and that the voice increases in pitch greatly over the next 2 months and then following that a little bit more to the year mark. I doubt you've any reason to be worried about a lacking result!

At first, I remember having to concentrate on pitch pretty regularly because I kept bottoming out at 140-145hz which could have also been due to the botox injection at 1 week post op. Additionally, my brain did not want to initially accept the higher pitch range as normal. Maybe it was indeed the difference of tying off 1/2 of the vocal cords vs 1/3. I did also tell Dr. Kim to air on the side of aggressive, mainly due to worries I had about tracheal shave weakening the voice box. I told him I would be fine if it came out a little higher than average, having a feeling the extra boost would do no harm. Post op after adjusting to my voice, I ended up with a very average result- at least 60hz up "naturally" and 75hz+ easily when thinking about it.

140hz normal speaking to 200hz
162hz consciously raising pitch to 230hz

73hz bottom out to 138hz
523hz top out to 660hz

That is where I am at now. In my case, I haven't noticed a significant change in my fundamental pitch from the first day I could say words, but that is rather rare and may have been attributable to my obsessiveness about recovery 😉 I drank water like a FISH! The water bottle was always near to me and half full for the first 4 weeks post op. It was the only thing I could do to fend off coughing fits from a cold I caught shortly after returning home.

From what Jessie told me, you may not even notice much of a change until you start vocal exercises at 2 months. Hang in there and be very kind to your cords.. Drink a TON of water and try not to make low notes at all. I was kind of afraid to use a lower range at all for fear that it might stretch something or lessen the result.

Either way, the recordings you have posted so far have been great! And I know I'm not alone when I say I am looking forward to hearing more 🙂

[abbyt89]

Thanks for the response Jenny!

My post sounded a bit "complain-y" on second read and I really am not disappointed with where I am now as much as I am eager for it to fully heal. The fact that my voice isn't exactly where I want it to be is perfectly understandable and acceptable especially since I was told multiple times to give it several months to heal.

So I'm just going to continue taking it easy with my voice and letting it recover. When thinking about it my body does tend to take a little while for things to heal, so that could be part of the reason. And I have been following the aftercare instructions as closely as possible! I eat healthy and literally drink nothing but water, no caffeine, no alcohol, nothing. My Spiro and another (non hrt) med I take tend to be dehydrating so I down probably a gallon of water a day easily, and I quit smoking weed a few weeks before surgery and don't plan on doing it again until maybe 6 months from now, maybe.

So I'm just going to give it time. Again thanks for the reassurance, you've been so informative and helpful with all of this!

[Jennygirl]

Glad to help! You are welcome 🙂

[sarahb]

Hi Jenny,

I just wanted to thank you so much for your informative posts throughout your recovery. It's really been helpful to me. I, too, was skeptical of voice surgery for the longest time because there was such a stigma of bad results in the community. Hearing your results, as well as Abby's, has given me confidence that the Yeson technique is finally what I've been waiting for.

It's so awesome that you have taken the time for so long to continue updating people with your progress and answering questions. I'm sure you can understand just how helpful it is to the community. I did the same thing when I had my SRS (you can find those posts if you click through my post history) and I'm so glad you did the same with your voice surgery, especially with it being so unknown in the community at this point.

I am actually very likely going to be booking an appointment for the surgery with Yeson for late October or early November. The voice is the last thing that's holding me back in my life, and even with the risks I feel it's necessary. I'm going to follow your lead and keep a record of my progress here on Susans to benefit the community.

Thanks!

Sarah

[kathyp]

Wow!  Abby you really sound great so soon after surgery.
O.K., in 36 hours I will boarding a flight to Seoul for my Yeson experience. My question to the both of you
Jenny & Abby, looking back would you recommend the 1/2 " more aggressive approach or the safer 1/3",
and do you really have that much say in the matter with Dr Kim?
Thanks, Kathy
 

[sarahb]

Hey kathyp, please keep us updated as much as you can during your recovery, if at all possible! I'm trying to book the surgery for the end of October and I'd love to hear how it goes for you. Good luck with everything. I can't wait to hear your new voice!

Sarah

[smile_jma]

Hey kathyp, please keep us updated as much as you can during your recovery, if at all possible! I'm trying to book the surgery for the end of October and I'd love to hear how it goes for you. Good luck with everything. I can't wait to hear your new voice!

Sarah

Good luck to you, too~ If you can, you should go sightseeing here, too. Might be chilly, but it's still a beautiful place when it's not raining.

[sarahb]

Good luck to you, too~ If you can, you should go sightseeing here, too. Might be chilly, but it's still a beautiful place when it's not raining.

Thank you! Yeah, definitely, I can't wait to check out Seoul.

[Jennygirl]

Wow!  Abby you really sound great so soon after surgery.
O.K., in 36 hours I will boarding a flight to Seoul for my Yeson experience. My question to the both of you
Jenny & Abby, looking back would you recommend the 1/2 " more aggressive approach or the safer 1/3",
and do you really have that much say in the matter with Dr Kim?
Thanks, Kathy

Woowooo!!!

I would definitely just ask Dr. Kim what he thinks. His decision will be based on your pre-op consultation/exam, where your current fundamental frequency stands, and any other concerns you may have. He is very perceptive and listens very intently to what you want. I have a feeling that if you were say something he doesn't understand, he will let you know instead of just saying "uh-huh" like most people do when they can't seem to translate. I had no problem communicating with him.. his english seemed just fine 🙂 If that is a concern you have, then absolutely voice it!

Congrats and keep us updated!! Excited for you!

[sarahb]

Jennygirl, are you going to be doing more video updates to show how your voice has been progressing? It's been just about 4 months now, right?

[Jennygirl]

Yes you are right, perhaps another video is in order. To me, the only real difference has been a slight bit of range increase and a big increase in volume 🙂