Quote from: Rachelicious on February 16, 2015, 11:36:25 PM
Please get it out of your head that "being able to" hit 130hz is weird, it's just going to sideline people into your myopic and idealised perspective of your voice that, honestly, goes beyond any gender cues perceptible to others.
This is voice feminization surgery. I know voice frequences and I can tell you it is far from uncommon for a woman's speaking range to extend that low in relaxed dialogue - it should very much be a lower extreme of sorts, and *not* where speech tends to dwell, but it is common in women.
Your voice is fine. Go have tea.
Well, I would not dismiss Voodles issues. If her average voice now is in a relaxed mode at 160 Hz, its not really the increase she hoped for, giving her 200 Hz . And it may well be that it is so - Yesons number 75 is an average increase, this means for some it may be a little less and for some it may be more. So its well possible she only got lets say 40 Hz increase and is disappointed by that, despite her voice really sounding good to my ears too, but one would have to compare pre and post op trained and untrained voice recordings to get a clearer picture of how much has changed.
I think 130 Hz should rather be the bottom of the voice. Presently 130 Hz is above my realxed level or around that. If I drop low I got into the two digit numbers. So I would hope that later 130 Hz would feel like the two digits now. But if the voice rests in a relaxed manner at the 130 Hz, I would be disappointed as this is what it does right now as well. Voodle - can you tell us where those 130 Hz for you are? Are they the very bottom of your voice or is it a relaxed speech for you? I did not perceive a 130 Hz word in your recording, so I kind of assume that it is more the lower limit if you try to speak really low. What was your low end before? In many who had VFS the low end before was 80 or 90 Hz and it went up to 130 Hz.
Quote from: voodle on February 16, 2015, 06:35:40 PM
Haha it's weird to think how much I must have screwed things up with coughing since initially I only went up a few hz and you've already got a nearly 40hz pitch increase, that's great
I doubt it has to do with the coughing. I hope so, since I will go into the surgery just recovering from a cold and certainly will have to cough a few times 🙁 - but Yeson gives out that chart with different edevelopments and for some it is initially faster and for some it is slower, he did not say why that is though, AFAIK... So you were just not one of those who had a fast increase. I suspect I will not be one either since my body tends to react with a lot of swelling to surgeries and this would certainly bring down the pitch.
Also I dont think it has to do nything with "nowadays" - In the FB group there are some who had the same issues - slow initial pitch gain but later on it was going up - and they had surgery within the past 6 months. Dont be so hard on yourself, please.
QuoteIt's crazy to think I did actually have a good result - I went to a group speech therapy session the other day and I felt so bad, it was like I was wasting everyone else's time because my voice is actually already there 😕 (although I do think it still has room for improvement). The speech therapist kinda did that on purpose.
Yes. To remind you that your surgery DID work and that it is a alot easier now for you to speak normally, right?
I think you are right with the statement that the surger mainly makes it easier to use a new voice. It gives you a new instrument and it is easiert to play it at a higher pitch. That does not mean it is impossible to hit some pretty low pitches with some effort but the "sweet point" where your voice returns to in a relaxed mood should be higher, the pitch to speak in easily should be higher and the upper trange should be easier accessible. I think all of that was achieved to you - the VFS does not make you sound like a cis teenage girl, it just takes your voice and makes it less likely to hit low pitches, cuts off the very bottom and makes it easier to reach the upper pitches for speaking. Also it should take away some of the low timbre of the voice, which is not really measurable that easily, but it is audible and is why your "low pitch voice" still sounds very much like a woman trying to speak low and not male.