Yeson voice feminization surgery

[Livvykins]

No attention to resonance or anything? That is way cool - totally feminine in pitch and sound. I guess you have done some subconscious changes to your voice as many who use a trained voice pre op do, but still - I find this ia very nice and I am happy for you

Aw thanks so much, that's made my day!  I've honestly done very very little conscious training and certainly none with a therapist... I did a little bit of practise with the Kathe Perez course, but got fed up doing it after a while as I found the course recording really irritating... I've probably made sub conscious changes though over the past couple of years.

[AshleyL]

I have a question I was wondering about... in a lot of cases, different qualities of our voices are influenced by body size and habitus.  Taller people can tend to have longer tracheas and bigger lungs, pharynx, etc.  While VFS won't change any of those features, it does alter how our vocal chords interact with them.

So my question is this:  Do you think your body size, and relevant proportional vocal anatomy, had an effect on the outcome of your post VFS voice?  And how?  Did certain features disappear or change?

I know a lot of this can be manipulated with proper vocal training, but my vocal coach brought up this question during our last session and I was intrigued by it as well, so I thought I'd post it here.

[AmyBerlin]

Dear Ashley,

I'm 5'10" and have quite a sturdy build. My male voice pre-surgery was a dramatic baritone. When I didn't pay attention to raising my larynx and making my voice come out femininely, the male voice would always resurface and come out loud and clear. Post surgery, this register is unavailable. If I just relax and speak or sing with low larynx position, it gets strenuous and the voice, while still feminine, will tire in a relatively short timespan. If I raise my larynx, however, my voice can keep going for hours without problem. So the surgery sort of forces you to use the correct larynx position.

I find it crucial that you're able to reach the feminine-voice "sweet spot" before surgery, because you'll need that post-surgery to find a comfortable place to speak from. 

Regards,

Amy

[Livvykins]

Dear Ashley,

I'm 5'10" and have quite a sturdy build. My male voice pre-surgery was a dramatic baritone. When I didn't pay attention to raising my larynx and making my voice come out femininely, the male voice would always resurface and come out loud and clear. Post surgery, this register is unavailable. If I just relax and speak or sing with low larynx position, it gets strenuous and the voice, while still feminine, will tire in a relatively short timespan. If I raise my larynx, however, my voice can keep going for hours without problem. So the surgery sort of forces you to use the correct larynx position.

I find it crucial that you're able to reach the feminine-voice "sweet spot" before surgery, because you'll need that post-surgery to find a comfortable place to speak from. 

Regards,

Amy

Well said Amy, totally agree!  That is certainly how I've found things as well

[AshleyL]

Dear Ashley,

I'm 5'10" and have quite a sturdy build. My male voice pre-surgery was a dramatic baritone. When I didn't pay attention to raising my larynx and making my voice come out femininely, the male voice would always resurface and come out loud and clear. Post surgery, this register is unavailable. If I just relax and speak or sing with low larynx position, it gets strenuous and the voice, while still feminine, will tire in a relatively short timespan. If I raise my larynx, however, my voice can keep going for hours without problem. So the surgery sort of forces you to use the correct larynx position.

I find it crucial that you're able to reach the feminine-voice "sweet spot" before surgery, because you'll need that post-surgery to find a comfortable place to speak from. 

Regards,

Amy

Thanks for the responses!  I'm wondering though, since you've had significant vocal training and have used a high larynx position for quite some time, is it because you had used a high larynx position that it sort of became the 'default' muscle memory position (to a small degree) and using a lower larynx position takes conscious effort, which is why it tires out more quickly?

For me, I think I semi-unconsciously maintain a higher larynx position most of the time, except when I'm doing some involuntary actions (laughing while trying to talk is probably the worst) and I don't tend to have to think about it for day to day stuff.  So it's mostly automatic, but it requires a sort of unconscious effort to maintain, if that makes any sense.

I'm about 6'3", but luckily I have a pretty slim build.  My male voice goes down to about 100 hz, but nowadays when I do recordings the average is around 130 because of learned usage of inflections in my speech patterns.  My trained voice is usually around 160, which sort of fits for my size. 

My personal hang ups about the sound of my voice notwithstanding, my friends and family in the know say my voice passes fine, and I don't usually get any odd looks (except to gawk at my height) when speaking with patients.

Ashley.

I swear... waiting 2 1/2 more months is going to be torture!

[anjaq]

If I just relax and speak or sing with low larynx position, it gets strenuous and the voice, while still feminine, will tire in a relatively short timespan. If I raise my larynx, however, my voice can keep going for hours without problem. So the surgery sort of forces you to use the correct larynx position

Oh that is a bit weird. Because this is already happening to me now. If I drop my voice too much - which is in a way a relaxation - it strains a lot, I get more voice assymetry - bad sounds etc. So I guess this makes sense:

Thanks for the responses!  I'm wondering though, since you've had significant vocal training and have used a high larynx position for quite some time, is it because you had used a high larynx position that it sort of became the 'default' muscle memory position (to a small degree) and using a lower larynx position takes conscious effort, which is why it tires out more quickly?

The upside is, Amy says it still sounds feminine which is good for the cases one slips. And as I understand it, when doing the raised larynx position, it is also easier then to speak? After all, a raised larynx always seems to go along with an increase in pitch, for some that is enough to be in the female range, for some it means one has to push even higher from that position...

Something I just realized though: We are often talking about average speaking frequency F0. Simply by increasing intonation, "speech melody" that F0 goes up quite a bit as it means the average goes up due to some of the sylabils that are high pitched. If F0 then a good measure to analyze voices at all? I mean, I can read the rainbow passage with an F0 of 160 Hz but still have low pitched words in it at 125 Hz but some >200 Hz words will compensate for them. Reading something else or using less intonation will shift this and then I have only F0 of 140 Hz - or reading an example page that has only questions written on it (going way up in pitch a tthe end of the word or sentence - its a voice training page), I would have an F0 of 180 maybe.

[AshleyL]

Oh that is a bit weird. Because this is already happening to me now. If I drop my voice too much - which is in a way a relaxation - it strains a lot, I get more voice assymetry - bad sounds etc. So I guess this makes sense:The upside is, Amy says it still sounds feminine which is good for the cases one slips. And as I understand it, when doing the raised larynx position, it is also easier then to speak? After all, a raised larynx always seems to go along with an increase in pitch, for some that is enough to be in the female range, for some it means one has to push even higher from that position...

When I start to get lazy or relax too much with my voice I tend to feel like I'm speaking more from the back of my throat/mouth, rather than resonating in the front, and while my larynx may drop a little, I'm pretty sure it stays in a raised position. 

Something I just realized though: We are often talking about average speaking frequency F0. Simply by increasing intonation, "speech melody" that F0 goes up quite a bit as it means the average goes up due to some of the sylabils that are high pitched. If F0 then a good measure to analyze voices at all? I mean, I can read the rainbow passage with an F0 of 160 Hz but still have low pitched words in it at 125 Hz but some >200 Hz words will compensate for them. Reading something else or using less intonation will shift this and then I have only F0 of 140 Hz - or reading an example page that has only questions written on it (going way up in pitch a tthe end of the word or sentence - its a voice training page), I would have an F0 of 180 maybe.

This is what I meant when I was talking about learned inflection.  I think the F0 is still a good measure, but one should be aware that it is in fact an average of the entire recording and you should still look to the source to look at the highs and lows.  Plus, considering that the bulk of your speech will typically be in the F0 range, depending on how many points the software samples, a few peaks may not have that much of an effect on the overall average.  No one really speaks in a monotone day to day anyway.  Personally I don't really like reading from passages when doing recordings because I'm conscious of a change in my speech pattern when reading.  I've been working on memorizing the rainbow passage and then trying to recite it as though I were explaining the phenomenon to someone else in casual conversation.

[anjaq]

I notice in praat that I will typically have a sort of baseline and then peaks going up from that with some intermediate area where it goes a bit up and down. I always also look at the baseline or take sections that dont have those super high peaks in them as they tend to raise the overall average F0 by several 10s.

[northcountrymassage]

So listening to you girls does that mean since I never had any training beforehand, and only used my regular voice (137 Hz) that my voice is going to be weird and will tire/get sore quickly?  I know that Dr. Kim said that I will probably only need the one shot of Botox and with professional coaching afterwards that I should see good improvement somewhere from 2 to 4 months, but now I'm a little freaked out again.  I plan on training hard, but I'm now worried that if for some reason my brain just doesn't get it I will have problems from here on out.  I suppose worrying is foolish as the deed is done, and there is no turning back now.  Operation was on Monday and I think everything is healing fine, I have my follow up tomorrow afternoon and then fly back to the states Saturday.  Oh another question for you all.  It seems like for the past couple of days I have been really tired, do you think this is because of the jet lag, restarting the HRT, the fact that the surgery is over, or just a combination of all of the above?

[AshleyL]

So listening to you girls does that mean since I never had any training beforehand, and only used my regular voice (137 Hz) that my voice is going to be weird and will tire/get sore quickly?  I know that Dr. Kim said that I will probably only need the one shot of Botox and with professional coaching afterwards that I should see good improvement somewhere from 2 to 4 months, but now I'm a little freaked out again.  I plan on training hard, but I'm now worried that if for some reason my brain just doesn't get it I will have problems from here on out.  I suppose worrying is foolish as the deed is done, and there is no turning back now.  Operation was on Monday and I think everything is healing fine, I have my follow up tomorrow afternoon and then fly back to the states Saturday.  Oh another question for you all.  It seems like for the past couple of days I have been really tired, do you think this is because of the jet lag, restarting the HRT, the fact that the surgery is over, or just a combination of all of the above?

I don't know for sure whether or not if using your voice as you normally did will tire you out quickly or not.  But if I recall correctly, Jenny didn't do a whole lot of voice training beforehand and I don't think she reported any drastic vocal fatigue after her surgery.  It should be interesting to compare notes as you recover.  As for the training part, the good part is that from here on out it's all in your hands (well, having a professional coach wouldn't hurt either).  You don't have to worry about something going wrong that's out of your control anymore, and however long it takes, I'm sure you'll find your voice eventually .

[anjaq]

The part about Jenny is not entirely true. Actually she did a lot of voice training before and I think she really was paying attention to it a lot aftwerwards as well. So she is probably not the person one should take as an example for someone with less training.
But the other parts I think are so true. To me it seems a big benefit is, that post op you cannot do anything wrong in the sense that it goes into male register anymore. You basically "only" have to worry about souding good and to speak healthy and not so much anymore about sounding female. And those issues are basically regular voice training - the type that singers, speakers, teachers or people who had any other voice issues are doing. I believe this makes it a lot easier on the mind.

[northcountrymassage]

Thank you anjaq, that does help ease my mind quite a bit knowing that I will have to work on fine tuning it to sound the best that it can, and not that it is going to sound awful. :-)

[anjaq]

Mind you this is only what I gather from the ones who were reporting about it. I did not have this procedure.

[Livvykins]

Well it's finally been a month and I can talk again... YAY!!!

OMG I'm SO hoarse the whole time! I start off the day hoarse, get a little better mid day, and can barely say anything by the evening. Still it's such a massive relief to be able to communicate without a text to speech app...

So I recorded my one month video to send to Jessie, I really should have done it earlier in the day before I got as croaky

But here it is anyway...



I'll record another one each month for the next year, sorry if they get boring!

Livvy x

[anjaq]

Sounds like oyu are breaking upo a bit some of the time, but when it works it sounds great. No doubt this was a success, I think, as long as the hoarseness will go away as nicely as it always seems to have done up to now with others.
Can you describe a bit how it felt to speak in the video? Did you use some control, some of the things you did in voice training, did you deliberately control pitch, resonance or anything? Did it feel the same in terms of using muscles and your voice as it did pre op with a lower pitch?

So glad this works out good for you! Best wishes for the next months

[Livvykins]

Sounds like oyu are breaking upo a bit some of the time, but when it works it sounds great. No doubt this was a success, I think, as long as the hoarseness will go away as nicely as it always seems to have done up to now with others.
Can you describe a bit how it felt to speak in the video? Did you use some control, some of the things you did in voice training, did you deliberately control pitch, resonance or anything? Did it feel the same in terms of using muscles and your voice as it did pre op with a lower pitch?

So glad this works out good for you! Best wishes for the next months

Thanks!  I honestly should have recorded it in the morning not late afternoon... it wasn't breaking up anywhere like that much earlier... Also after like the first sentence it was getting a lot harder to say anything at all.  It certainly drops in pitch when it wears out.

I honestly don't think I was doing anything while speaking in the vid, except trying to get through it before my voice gave out... certainly nothing resonancey... It felt just like speaking naturally, using exactly the same muscles, but as if you've lost or losing your voice with laryngitis if you've ever had that.  Also I've been really snuffly the last couple of days, I think I've got a cold coming 

[Charlotte2]

Wow you sound great for just one month post-op!  Very little hoarseness.
Did you have the full half of your vocal cords tied up?

[Livvykins]

Wow you sound great for just one month post-op!  Very little hoarseness.
Did you have the full half of your vocal cords tied up?

Thanks Charlotte!

I'm not really sure how it compares to other girls results for one month, I've only really seen Jenny's vids and I think the earliest one was from two months...

No it was just a third I think... if you go back a few pages you should be able to find the picture I posted of my vocal chords

I was trying to use as relaxed a voice as possible and speak naturally without any use of resonance training or raising my pitch at all... when I try raising my pitch is goes a lot higher... I thought speaking without would be a lot more useful for the video though.  By the end of the passage my voice was failing a bit... I had been nattering quite a lot that day, I should have recorded it in the morning with a rested voice.  Oops... next time!

[Charlotte2]

Thanks Charlotte!

I'm not really sure how it compares to other girls results for one month, I've only really seen Jenny's vids and I think the earliest one was from two months...

No it was just a third I think... if you go back a few pages you should be able to find the picture I posted of my vocal chords

I'm about a week off the 2 month mark and I still have a bit more hoarseness than you even now. So good job!   

[Shantel]

Olivia,
     I clicked on you're video and it said discontinued so I watched it on YouTube and my gosh you sound just wonderful to me dear, nice job Dr. Kim!