Yeson voice feminization surgery

[barbie]

I am booked!! March 14th. I'm so excited for the surgery, and I am really looking forward to Korea too. I have never left North America so I don't really know what to expect. I am going with my partner, so at least she will be able to speak for me. I must admit that the thought of not speaking for a month scares me more than the surgery.

Most Korean can read English, even they are not good at speaking and listening. For emergency case, you may carry some paper or smartphone for memo to write and show it to nearby Koreans. Thus, being unable to speak will not be serious drawback during your stay in Seoul.

barbie~~

[AmyBerlin]

Hi all,

it's incredible that so many messages poured in during the short time that I didn't keep up with the boards. And good to hear that a lot of people are deciding to make the trip to Korea :-)

Regarding the speaking voice: Typical male speaking voices have F0s between G2 and C#3. D3 to F#3 is the gender-neutral zone and G3 to C4 is female territory. Even as females speak more melodically than males, it doesn't make sense to practice notes higher than, say, A4 for speaking. Nobody uses higher notes in speaking, not even at the ends of questions, except maybe to comfort infants or the like.

The highest note I can reach with these warm ups is F4 maybe if I really push a G4 buts it's super hard to get there and it's really thin sounding. Should I just not try to get that high up?

Anyone can go higher than a G4. The thing is, with male resonance you can't. If you're using female resonance (or, initially, falsetto) you can go higher. It's what's called "the break". Loosen your lower jaw, start with soft notes and try not to resonate so much in the chest, but focus on bringing your resonance up and to the front. And raise your larynx.

2. Can you produce large volume female voice with the method taught in voice therapy? Most of the trans-girls I saw on youtube speak very softly... but I want to sound energetic.

I notice a certain volume limit in the low range too. You can fake a loud voice with male resonance near its upper pitch limit, an extremely high larynx position and placing your vowels and consonants very much to the front of the mouth (in Europe we say "speaking into the mask"). Namoli Brennet uses this for singing sometimes.

3. why do females have such a wide range of "middle register"? Is this trainable? I don't think this one has too much to deal with the vocal cords size... as females even alto have almost an octave of middle register. Leggerio tenors or tenorino might have similar size of cords, but still the range of zona di passaggio is only about a 4th. Is this somehow related to speech habits (ok I saw that middle register is what US vocal coaches called "call voice", so that's what I think)?

I'm unfamiliar with the term "call voice". But I think what you mean could be one of the keys to feminizing your voice. If you're familiar with using the passaggio in singing, then go into the passaggio from above and just stay there as you go lower and lower and you'll get a much more female-sounding low end (don't go deeper than the D3 though, that's male turf). In other words, do as though you were in passaggio, even though you could use chest voice, and you'll obtain a feminized sound. Keep a loose lower jaw.

Hope this helps,

Amy

[alexiakk]

Hi all,

it's incredible that so many messages poured in during the short time that I didn't keep up with the boards. And good to hear that a lot of people are deciding to make the trip to Korea :-)

Regarding the speaking voice: Typical male speaking voices have F0s between G2 and C#3. D3 to F#3 is the gender-neutral zone and G3 to C4 is female territory. Even as females speak more melodically than males, it doesn't make sense to practice notes higher than, say, A4 for speaking. Nobody uses higher notes in speaking, not even at the ends of questions, except maybe to comfort infants or the like.

Anyone can go higher than a G4. The thing is, with male resonance you can't. If you're using female resonance (or, initially, falsetto) you can go higher. It's what's called "the break". Loosen your lower jaw, start with soft notes and try not to resonate so much in the chest, but focus on bringing your resonance up and to the front. And raise your larynx.

I notice a certain volume limit in the low range too. You can fake a loud voice with male resonance near its upper pitch limit, an extremely high larynx position and placing your vowels and consonants very much to the front of the mouth (in Europe we say "speaking into the mask"). Namoli Brennet uses this for singing sometimes.

I'm unfamiliar with the term "call voice". But I think what you mean could be one of the keys to feminizing your voice. If you're familiar with using the passaggio in singing, then go into the passaggio from above and just stay there as you go lower and lower and you'll get a much more female-sounding low end (don't go deeper than the D3 though, that's male turf). In other words, do as though you were in passaggio, even though you could use chest voice, and you'll obtain a feminized sound. Keep a loose lower jaw.

Hope this helps,

Amy

Thanks Amy for replying!! An evidence that I'm pretty sure I'm not using falsetto in C6 is that I can connect it very smoothly back to lower chest voice range when singing descending scales - and I'm kinda adapted to it. However, I really have a difficulty in connection when doing ascending scales and thus I tend to "push" through passaggios instead of transition smoothly... no problem with lip trills though.

As for the "mask" - I think this is interesting as my new vocal coach always use this term  "Always singing forwardly" and "Always sing in the mask". But when doing ascending scale through the first passaggio, I feel uncomfortable and even suspicious about whether I'm singing in falsetto... as it's weak and I don't know how to strengthen it (stuck in throat!)

[michelle_h]

Hi all,

First off, thanks to all that have posted such great info. Jessie has me booked for May 8th. Wondered if anyone has any advice for someone travelling alone to get the VFS done. From what I gather most of you who've completed this had a travel companion who could speak for you. So...getting meals, dealing with the hotel staff, and getting back to the clinic etc. for a follow up I'm sure will be a challenge without being able to speak for a week.

On another note, the boyfriend is nervous I'm planning this. He thinks my voice is just fine and I don't need this. He's afraid this procedure will change my voice so quickly I'll have to explain myself to his kids and parents. They don't know about my past. My understanding is there will be a change up front but the bulk of the voice change will take place over the course of a year provided the voice exercises are followed. I don't need this to pass, but like others have mentioned it would be nice to have a natural sounding voice without effort or thinking about it. I teach in computer labs and video production studios so I'm hoping to be able to speak loudly without my voice dropping or cracking which it does now and then. Also would like to record tutorial videos for my students. Can't stand my voice at the moment so I've avoided that as much as possible.

Thanks for any advice / help,
Michelle

[anjaq]

Sounds like your therapist is a sweetie! I will try this as well. So what then is an expectable range note wise to practice speaking in my female range? I can hit and speak at A3 to C4 (to me this sounds weird). but my male voice is more like A2 to C3.... I just want to make some progress while I'm saving for surgery. Thanks!

Oh she is nice yes. Tries to do something to help me, though I think she overestimates how well my voice is as she said I dont need to focus on learning prosody changes anymore but I know I do as others have noticed it. Still she is good and has had quite a few trans-patients. I actually did just today send he links to some of the youtube videos from Yeson as she has a cold and cannot work this week, maybe she will not be that totally opposed to me even mentioning any kind of surgery after that - it would be kind of good to hear her opinion on it and if I should still want to have VFS after the training in this year, I would like to have a voice therapist to wrok with me afterwards to get things back into shape again.
Amy explained the part on natural speaking ranges rather well. I would however really not focus too much on pitch at this point and especially not if you are aiming for a VFS. Rainig pitch can cause tension, it can make it harder to train the other parameters and the success of training a higher pitch is lost with VFS as you dont need it anymore then. So better focus on resonance, inflection, prosody, melody, sound and other qualities like that as well as expanding your (singing) range and improving your breathing and get over that "break". The whole "raining your larynx" thing is critical to reach higher notes and resonance and the breathing as well as relaxing the jaw is a key towards get over the break. All of this has nothing to do with raising your average speaking pitch and it is plenty of work as it is, so I would focus on that. Me for example - I am now actualyl (which is kind of awkward) deliberately speaking in a lower pitch thatn I would like to just because I know that otherwise the hypertension is getting worse again and that is what I need to cure before any next step.

[samantha.mich]

Amy and Anjaq, Thank you for answering my questions! Ok I'm practicing at least once sometimes twice a day the exercises that Jenny posted along with some of the other tips I've received on this thread and on you tube. Now if I don't focus so much on pitch as Anjaq has suggested since I'm aiming to have VFS before the end of this year. How will be able to know if the other parts of my voice are correct sounding (resonance, inflection,prosody and melody) if I'm practicing at a lower pitch? Is this a ridiculous question? And I'm not really sure how to even practice prosody. I very much appreciate your time. Thanks!

[anjaq]

Well I guess you could try to raise pitch to test it but I guess generally if you sound like a female with a very deep voice, you are doing great. That wont really work with a 100 Hz baritone or something like that, but if you get resonance trained by raising the larynx, your pitch will go up a tad anyways . I guess just raise th epitch a little bit  to a point where it is not straining, where you are still totally free to have a melody and go up and down without hitting  a ceiling. if you feel that the voice is tight, constrained, sounding and you can not go up several semitones during speech (because of intonation and melody and prosody) from that point without straining, then you are aiming too high. My guess would be like 140-160 Hz or so. the best would be to do this with a trans experienced voice trainer though, they can evaluate the progress and also should know about prosody, i have never trained that myself. I guess basically training that consists of repeating recorded female voices or something?

[Expressgirl]

I see that most people stay in Gangnam. I don't really want to because I would like to be centrally located for the rest of my stay. Do you think that will be an issue? The hotel, PJ hotel is 5 minutes from the subway station so I should be able to get around easily and get to the Yeson center on the three days I need to.

[barbie]

My present schedule says I will be in Seoul on Feb. 19-20, and March 7-8. For future additional schedules in Seoul, I will let you know, ladies. I hope to meet some of you to have dinner together. I will treat you!

barbie~~

[Boca.Lisa]

express girl

Looks like we'll overlap. Im arriving evening of the 18th. If you want to connect before, please email me or message back.

Hope to see you there (we can type at each other - lol)

Lisa

[anjaq]

Sooo many going there. Seriously - this is great!!! I would really really love to hear honest before and after recordings from all of you. If Dr Kim is as good as we think he is, we should not have many coming back who have no improvements or hoarseness or lack of volume (after some months healing that is).

[Boca.Lisa]

Anjaq, if I can figure out how to attach a file, ill definately post them.

[anjaq]

you can upload voice samples on vocaroo.com or soundcloud and link them - I think to attach files to this forum you need more permissions???

[Expressgirl]

So I sent Dr Kim a video of my vocal cords to make sure there was nothing that would disqualify me from the procedure. I am a good candidate for the surgery but Dr Kim did find  "tension discrepancy is observed on each side of your vocal folds indicating you have hyper functional medialization on phonation on your false vocal fold" He thinks I will need balancing bilateral vocal fold tension, but he will know more during the pre-op examination. Jennie, is this the same issue you had with one vocal cord being thicker than the other? It definitely looks like that from the video. It is weird to think my old voice will be gone forever. I am very hopeful to have a good outcome as my voice used to be really low and monotone.

[Jennygirl]

So I sent Dr Kim a video of my vocal cords to make sure there was nothing that would disqualify me from the procedure. I am a good candidate for the surgery but Dr Kim did find  "tension discrepancy is observed on each side of your vocal folds indicating you have hyper functional medialization on phonation on your false vocal fold" He thinks I will need balancing bilateral vocal fold tension, but he will know more during the pre-op examination. Jennie, is this the same issue you had with one vocal cord being thicker than the other? It definitely looks like that from the video. It is weird to think my old voice will be gone forever. I am very hopeful to have a good outcome as my voice used to be really low and monotone.

Yes that's exactly what I had, and mine was bad. I haven't seen my vocal folds since the post op exam in Seoul, but Dr. Kim said that he had corrected the asymmetry.

As well it was noted pre-op that I had a small blood hemorrhage / damage on the smaller side. He said it was probably the damage that caused the muscle folds to become asymmetric.

Dr. Kim is awesome

[megan2929]

Hi all,

First off, thanks to all that have posted such great info. Jessie has me booked for May 8th. Wondered if anyone has any advice for someone travelling alone to get the VFS done. From what I gather most of you who've completed this had a travel companion who could speak for you. So...getting meals, dealing with the hotel staff, and getting back to the clinic etc. for a follow up I'm sure will be a challenge without being able to speak for a week.

On another note, the boyfriend is nervous I'm planning this. He thinks my voice is just fine and I don't need this. He's afraid this procedure will change my voice so quickly I'll have to explain myself to his kids and parents. They don't know about my past. My understanding is there will be a change up front but the bulk of the voice change will take place over the course of a year provided the voice exercises are followed. I don't need this to pass, but like others have mentioned it would be nice to have a natural sounding voice without effort or thinking about it. I teach in computer labs and video production studios so I'm hoping to be able to speak loudly without my voice dropping or cracking which it does now and then. Also would like to record tutorial videos for my students. Can't stand my voice at the moment so I've avoided that as much as possible.

Thanks for any advice / help,
Michelle

So I just had my surgery yesterday so I obviously can't comment first-hand, but Dr. Kim explained that for the first month and half you don't really get much of a change at all because you're not really talking. Around the two month mark is when you get a very rapid change to a higher pitch and you begin your voice exercises. It then continues to improve and sound more natural over the rest of the year. 

[barbie]

So I just had my surgery yesterday so I obviously can't comment first-hand, but Dr. Kim explained that for the first month and half you don't really get much of a change at all because you're not really talking. Around the two month mark is when you get a very rapid change to a higher pitch and you begin your voice exercises. It then continues to improve and sound more natural over the rest of the year.

Megan,

Your voice already sounded feminine to my ears, but you still wanted to enhance it. I hope you get what you expected.

Here the level of dust is now normal, but a warning level of micro-dusts in Seoul area will continue until it rains.

Take care!

barbie~~

[Shantel]

Megan,

Your voice already sounded feminine to my ears, but you still wanted to enhance it. I hope you get what you expected.

Here the level of dust is now normal, but a warning level of micro-dusts in Seoul area will continue until it rains.

Take care!

barbie~~

So nice that you were there to meet up with her, you both looked so good, she's just a doll face isn't she Barbie?

[Expressgirl]

Hey BocaLisa. Sure, we can meet, where are you staying? I am going to be staying at the PJ hotel.

[michelle_h]

Hi Megan,

Is your post-op exam this Wednesday? Hope recovery is going well. How many days after the exam are you staying?

I was curious how many days most stayed after the exam. Jessie told me I could leave the next day. I thought I might stay a few extra days just in case.

Thanks for your previous reply too.

Michelle