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.
Quote from: samantha.mich on February 03, 2014, 01:27:10 PM
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.
Quote from: alexiakk on February 03, 2014, 12:37:05 PM
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.
Quote from: alexiakk on February 03, 2014, 12:37:05 PM
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