How to make my voice deeper?

[TheDane]

First off, Hi, been lurking for a while but first time posting.

So, I pass pretty much all the time, till the second I open my mouth.
My voice is high pitched till the point ear-bleeding. It's really bad.
I'm not on T, nor am I going to get on T any time soon. (I'm pre-anything)

So is the anything I can do to make it deeper?
I don't expect to end up sounding like Proof, just hoping to sound a little bit more like a late-teen boy and a little bit less like a 8 year old girl singing opera.

[aleon515]

There are exercises, essentially involve saying words like long, song, wrong, etc and emphasizing the ng. This actually has some good sound science to it. I mean to say it would work, I think. Now the question is if you can actually do these. I think it hurts some people's throats, sure did mine. You can find the exercises some place, but afaik, they are legit. I don't think they'd get you from a soprano to a tenor, but they'd get your voice a bit lower. The other thing is usually higher voices are from higher in the head and lower from the diaprahm. I don't think this always works.


--Jay

[Contravene]

There are definitely ways to deepen your voice even if you're pre-T. There was a thread about this a while back where I and a lot of other people posted some voice training exercises that might help you out.

Here's the link to that thread:

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,150162.msg1246136.html#msg1246136

[anibioman]

there are also coaches and speech therapists for this. the same people MTFs use to raise the pitch of their voice.

[Jack_M]

My 2 cents:

I tend to find these things only injure your voice and hurt your throat. MTFs vary where they talk from and is safe and sustainable. But they had that first place to vary away from, and without T transguys don't have that place to switch to. Deep voices come more from the chest and you notice it more when on T. I also find a male voice is more about the resonance than the actual depth and that's only really achievable with changing vocal cords.

I find guys trying to lower their voice as always being obvious and it becomes a tell. Guys can have higher voices yet there's an obvious resonance to it that identifies it as male.

Messing with voice is difficult and can injure your voice and throat. I think it's better to take the time to more masculinise the way you talk to remove female afflictions (more rising and falling as you talk) and work on confidence.

I had a low female voice prior to T, but it was the lack of resonance that I lacked. When a cis male or transguy on T speaks, you can hear it more coming from the chest. In order to lower your voice it tends to be that people do it from the throat and that's a female tell.  Even speaking more from the diaphragm, the vocal cords just aren't the same in projecting the same effect.

Not saying you're screwed, I just personally feel that transguys who project confidence and just use the voice they can manage pass off a lot better than people forcing a voice that isn't their true range. If it sounds like you're forcing your voice it stands out and makes the person double take. If you look like a guy, have confidence, talk like a guy and just happen to have a higher voice, the first 3 will work better in your favour to overrule the voice pitch and you'll just be thought to be a young boy.

[Contravene]

My 2 cents:

I tend to find these things only injure your voice and hurt your throat.

Have you ever tried any vocal training to lower your voice?

You are not going to injure your throat or vocal chords if you do the exercises correctly and without straining yourself...

There are many ciswomen who have trained their voices to allow them to sing in the bass range with the same depth and resonance as any male. There are also many cismen who have trained their voices to the point where they can sing in the soprano range. It takes time and effort but it can be done.

I'm a musician, I've practiced and played alongside many choirs and individual singers which is where I first learned a lot of professional techniques for lowering the voice. The other techniques I learned come from taking public speaking/presentation classes. So I know for a fact that you can train even your speaking voice without injuring yourself and you can get the same depth and resonance of any cismale.

You shouldn't discourage people.

[Jack_M]

I've seen the training as I know some singers who trained to widen their range. The singers could do it a little when singing, but still sounding more feminine low.  Singing or talking it sounds forced in that it's either croaky or too breathy which gives it away.  I've honestly never heard a good example.  It's way easier for cis males to reach high levels than it is for cis females to reach low ranges.  I'm not trying to discourage, my two cents is that I think time is better spent on confidence building and masculinising speech than training to do something that very rarely passes off as male.  There's so much more to passing than the pitch of one's voice.  For example, a lot of transguys go on T and still don't pass even with lower voices because there's still too much of a female affliction to their voice.

As for hurting your throat, it's extremely likely without expensive training.  And with training it's more focused and successful with singing and not so much talking.  I can reach a wider buy-able range singing than I could manage talking.

It's each to their own, that's why I said it's my two cents.  I never find it works.  I always think it's easier to pass if you don't draw attention to yourself and for me, someone whose voice sounds forced draws attention.

[aleon515]

I found that the long, wrong, song kind of thing bothered my throat, but I know people who tried it and it did not. I think though for the most part Jack is right (why is he right so often, oh well). There are instructions and it says this quite specifically. That says I think it basically helps your range a bit. There are differences in a male and female voice and many of them are really not about PITCH, they are about RESONANCE. Resonance is a voice quality and I think starts changing about 2 months on T, if you are going on T. I actually think that the whole thing is a bit hard. If you are really bothered you can work with a speech coach or therapist, as a squeaky high voice might be not really how you *should* be talking.


--Jay

[Contravene]

I've honestly never heard a good example.

If you've never worked on the vocal exercises yourself at any length and if you've never heard a good example why are you even debating this? Sorry if I sound like a jerk but it's pretty uneducated and insulting to say that voice training rarely ever works when it's actually known to work very well.

Try looking up Suzanne Fatta. She's a contralto who's well known for singing in the bass range. Her voice isn't croaky or whispery in the least. It's indistinguishable from a male's bass. (And just for the hell of it you can look up Vitas if you want. His vocal range is mindblowing.) So there's a good example for you.

I do agree that it's easier for males to train their voices for higher ranges but most of the exercises for lowering your voice are actually very basic. Getting a male resonance is as simple as speaking from your diaphragm rather than from your throat. The point of most other exercises is to stretch the vocal cords which, incidentally, has a similar effect to how testoserone lengthens and thickens the vocal cords. Once the vocal cords have stretched you don't have to try or force yourself to speak more deeply, you'll just naturally be able to. Singing and speaking are a bit different but the exercises and results from them are the same and extremely simple: stretch your vocal cords and breathe from your chest.

Lessons are always great and I would suggest them if you're that worried about hurting yourself or if you're trying something really intense but you really don't need crazy expensive lessons to do most voice lowering exercises correctly because they're very simple and straight forward.

As for inflection, that has nothing to do with the vocal chords. Inflection has to do with speech patterns, how words are pronounced or stressed. Women tend to have a stronger cadence to their speech patterns and much more intonation while men don't. To get a more male speech pattern all you need to do is change your intonation. It's pretty common for male voices to be nearly monotone.

I have heard some guys who force the voices to sound deeper and that is a give away so I understand what you mean there but I'm willing to bet that those guys haven't spent much time training their voices either.

I agree with you that having confidence is the most important part of trying to pass but getting a deep voice pre-T would be a pretty awesome confidence booster.