Yeson voice feminization surgery

[Rachelicious]

Indeed, you totally hit the ball out of the park with this one

Happy to hear your casual voice so good! You have me quite psyched for my own trip.

[lovelyjmi]

Thank ya! <3 .. You'll love and hate it all the way lol... Seriously though, excited for you ! <3

[ImagineKate]

Nah I didn't go to an ENT, because I decide what makes me happy .. not a doctor! I've had it up to here with doctors telling me not to do this or that. I've had so many bad ones. But my family doctor has always been the most kind person in the world and helped me transition! <3

OK I did not mean for any gatekeeping purposes, just to avoid flying all the way to Korea just to be turned down by Dr Kim himself (however, he seems to be able to fix nearly anything with the voice, but I am not about to blow a flight and hotel stay just for an expensive and depressing vacation.) I seem to remember Jenny went and had pictures taken of her vocal cords before she went. In any case though Jessie has been very helpful and communicative and after sending her the pre op forms and voice recordings we'll see what's what.

[ImagineKate]

This Link may help you.

Thanks but that's the same email I got.

[lovelyjmi]

Well, all I did was send Yeson a voice clip of Rainbow flipping Passage haha .. and all was good. They said "Yup. We can fix that."! And that was all !

[Rachelicious]

Indeed. I've yet to arrive, but I did the same thing as jmi. Dr. Kim heard my voice sample and his language in answering my questions implied I'm a good candidate.

Also, I had my vocal folds scoped years ago for a laryngitis issue - based on the ENT's rather shocked reaction upon arriving at my vocal folds, I'd say there's work to be done.

[Alexis79]

72 pages.. whew...not enough time to read up all of it.

Can somebody please newer this much since I don't see it in the last 6 pages or so...

How much difference from a generally untrained voice is there? And...if vocal training has been going...how much difference from there instead?

Looking for generoli ties as opposed to hz numbers.

Thanks.

[ImagineKate]

72 pages.. whew...not enough time to read up all of it.

Can somebody please newer this much since I don't see it in the last 6 pages or so...

How much difference from a generally untrained voice is there? And...if vocal training has been going...how much difference from there instead?

Looking for generoli ties as opposed to hz numbers.

Thanks.

There are quite a few videos and sound clips posted here. In a nutshell the difference is quite dramatic. I would instantly gender the "fixed" voice female in an instant.

[Jessika]

Thanks but that's the same email I got.

Yes, I only posted the link since you were contemplating e-mailing them less than 30 mins after I replied to your post.

[lovelyjmi]

72 pages.. whew...not enough time to read up all of it.

Can somebody please newer this much since I don't see it in the last 6 pages or so...

How much difference from a generally untrained voice is there? And...if vocal training has been going...how much difference from there instead?

Looking for generoli ties as opposed to hz numbers.

Thanks.

Well, male vocal chords are long, while female chords are short, so they shorten your vocal chords to match female vocal chords, thus cutting off lower frequencies and allowing you to easily speak in the female range. However, you do need voice training after during recovery to boost it up. My range has doubled the expected pitch of 75 Hz by training it.

[ImagineKate]

I sent them my natural voice. They also made me do "ah" for 10 seconds twice, which I am guessing is to check for vocal tremors. I think I have, so I might be getting botox too.

[byakuren25]

Hi Everyone,
Everything sounds so amazing here and a lot of people seem to be having amazing results. Its nice to see how this surgery can change so much by making someone to happy, (referring to you lovelyjmi so see extremely overjoyed and love the continual updates + also look forward to your singing update).But I have a few questions that I'm worried about and I hope someone could help me out.
1) I speak at around 160hz normally on a casual basis, and as you can see from lovelyjmi, her pitch has increased significantly, but she had started at 137 so I guess it was a great change for her, but if I have the same results I could end up speaking at 308hz and that would sound a bit too high and as an average it would be a bit child like. But I had been told by Jessie that people who have the laryngeal shave experience a minor drop in pitch, and thus I was thinking even with the 74hz increase, the minor pitch drop wouldn't effect me too much. So does anyone here have an results on how much of a drop people could probably encounter after the surgery has taken place.
2) One of my main reasons to do this surgery is to be able to sing in a female range. I'm not a professional singer (not that good) but I do love to sing nevertheless. So for the people who have had the surgery and are well into recovery, I was wondering if you could post you pre/post-op results of vocal capabilities. So for example like fry/chest/head/falsetto (if so)/whistle (vocally)/belts(especially this one) etc. I remember reading Jenny's results and I was amazed, but more results can help to really make a decision.
3) Also another question for post-ops, how long did it take for you to start actually properly reusing your whole range and you did prior to surgery and (for those that understand musical stuff and piano notes) did your range increase sequentially? By this I mean, did your chest voice raise 3/4 of an octave and as did you head and other registers, or was it more like, chest voice increased by 3/4 of an octave and the head voice only 1/2 and octave and continually getting smaller increases as you go up. For this in notes I mean chest voice (highest changing from E4 to C5) and head voice going from (highest E5 to C6) or was it more like chest (E4 to C5) and then for head (E5 to A5). These figure are not exact but relative and I hope you understand what I mean.
I apologize if this was the wrong place to post these questions and sorry for being so long and extensive lol, I didn't really know how to explain everything simply and yea. But thank you for reading anyway and hopefully someone can help me out.
Thanks everyone and good luck with the recovery and future surgery for those who haven't had it yet.

[lovelyjmi]

Thank you for the compliments!!

As I mentioned, I work at my voice with the exercises, so my pitch has gone up and up. My main goal is 250-260 for an average. If I didn't do the exercises, my voice would be much lower. Cause I do them 3-4-5 times a day just to give them a kick in the ass to stay high. Every day gets easier to maintain it though ! <3

I think you shouldn't be worried. I've never heard an un-natural pitch so far. And they'd be able to assure you that with a voice demo. Try to stay positive! If you wanna be happy with your voice and you're unhappy now, just send them a demo and go for it ! <3

[anjaq]

If a voice is naturally high in a totally relaxed state (!) meaning no (sub-) conscious change is done to it, I believe Dr Kim will be able to adapt the increase to your needs. Amy had a shorter part sutured for example because her vocal folds were already rather short and because she wanted to keep an Alto singing voice. As I understand it JMI as well as Jenny had more the extended version with more vocal chord length sutured. So it can be adapted.

Also I believe that voice training, which you are supposed to do anyways after a surgery or before or in general always - will change the average pitch anyways and give an increase. If you speak monotonous, your average will be lower than if you speak with a lot of melody. What I think personally is, that the low ends of the spectrum one talks at are what counts a lot. If your average is 140 or 180 or 220 but your lowest notes in that are at 110 Hz - the voice will not sound totally female no matter what the average says. And I think this is what can only be fixed by surgery or somehow always speaking at a non relaxed voice.

Regarding pre-Yeson examinations - I heard up to now only of one case where the patient was sent back after the examination in Seoul because the examination showed that the pitch range was already female in range and Dr Kim recommended to rather train to get a feminine tone and sound to the voice instead of focussing on pitch. In my case he was warning me when I sent in the pre examination results that it would probably not be the best idea to do the surgery at the time and recommended voice rehab before doing a surgery. I think if I did not sent in the examination results, he still would have done the surgery but told me that it may take much longer for me to heal and get my voice right under these conditions, but I dont think he would have sent me home. So I think if you can do it, it may be a bonus, but it is not needed

Regarding the voice range shifts - From what I heard from others here and from my consultation with a voice doctor here, the lower register will be shortened - the very low notes will be gone, so that is an overall decrease in pitch range, the "break" from chest to head voice will not shift a lot, because it apparently does not that strongly depend on gender anyways. The upper range seems to be a bit of a game of luck. In most cases it seems to go down a lot right after surgery and then increase again - in many cases it seems to return to near where it was before surgery, in quite a few cases it seems to have gone up a small bit even. Overall I understand it that the gain in the upper limit of pitch is not always very pronounced and usually does not compensate the loss in the lowest pitch range in terms of musical notes. If whistling works afterwards - that would be interesting to know.

Maybe the musicians here can explain it a lot better

[ImagineKate]

I can go very low if I want right now, almost down to 75Hz. I actually do a very good Michael Savage or Howard Stern voice. I did the rainbow passage for Yeson pre-analysis and my mean pitch is 139.1 So a normal relaxed, speaking voice with regular volume is around 140Hz. If I get the claimed 75Hz pitch increase I'll be ecstatic. I am not really aiming to go squeaky high but at least above 200.

Come to think of it I have myself naturally speaking in a podcast somewhere as well as on TV. Let me see if I can find it. This was this last Summer so it's pretty recent.

[ImagineKate]

Yep, 132.7Hz during normal conversation.

[lovelyjmi]

Correct Aurora. What you said about speaking melodically, that's how women usually talk. That's the "Throat" voice. While men are speaking more from the chest. If you keep talking from the chest, you'll have a much lower outcome. I speak from the throat all the time. I believe most of the impressive videos you see, are of people who learned to do that too ! If you ask me, that's what gives the best results as of sound.

[ImagineKate]

There are a few things that distinguish male and female voices.

First is pitch. This by itself makes a huge difference.
The second is resonance. This is the voice coming from head or chest.
The third is prosody. Prosody in a typical female voice is a musical sing-songy type of voice that is natural for cis women but takes practice for trans. This is also where men and women pronounce things differently and may have a different cadence to their voices.

[anjaq]

Jamie, yes of course - one needs to use a female register anyways. otherwise the voice is all harsh and has a deep timbre and soulds masculine. That would be the "chest resonance". If you do that, pitch does only help to a small degree. So getting the voice "cleaner" also makes it sound higher pitched even if it is not. I had the experience when I worked on this thing this year again, I had my pitch drop because of my voice damage but I improved resonance again and people told me that I talk "higher" now and that this suits me well. Praat says the opposite of course
But melody or prosody or intonation really make a big difference. From the gender perception of course , but also they get the average pitch all changed. I tried - monotonous speaking voice - F0 is about 140 Hz - with really a lot of melody and prosody (but without being silly about it), 190 Hz. This is why i am very careful now about using F0 or average speaking pitch as a measure of how pitch is perceived as a voice factor to people.

But clearly - if you can get the "throat voice" that Jamie mentioned, or "head resonance" as some say - this is IMO really what makes a huge difference and i also think that those videos with good voices all have this "nailed"

Its tough if you dont manage to get this done - I think in that case also a voice surgery may help , but only to a degree as this part of the puzzle needs to be found as well to make the voice complete.

[lovelyjmi]

Indeed. I'm sorta sing songy, but not all women are sing songy either. I have my certain type of character that defines me. And I'm still called miss 101% of the time now ! <3

Like, I hate to say this, but a lot of people are trying way too hard to be super cliche femmy girls... just be yourself! I've never been miss-gendered for the way I sound or act now ! <3