FTM voice therapy tips? i.e. how to deepen pre-T without destroying it?

[Gothic Dandy]

Has anybody here ever had success deepening their voice without the help of testosterone? I've noticed some guys on youtube were able to do it, but they don't give any tips beyond "speak from your chest". I was a choir nerd so I know training your vocal chords has a lot more to it than that. I tried to create my own voice exercise routine, but became impatient with the lack of changes and gave up.

Any opposite-direction tips from the ladies here? Like, what did you have to change in order to sound feminine? Maybe that would help me figure out what I'd have to change to sound more masculine.

[Dena]

What you need to do is use a chest voice where you relax the area above the larynx while speaking. If you don't force the range lower, it will do no damage. At best this will put you in the lower female range which would be in the upper male ranges. Without T there is limit to how low you can go. Even with T most males don't have voices as low as mine making the definition of what is accepted as male pretty large.

[underneath.the.skin]

I could also use some help with this-
Being Asian, I do have the gift of androgyny but getting that "male" voice is a bit of a challenge.
When I measured my voice with a pitch tuner, it was in a lower register than my male friends.
However, I don't feel it always sounds natural. For example, my mum mistakes it for a cold and my friends say I talk like I'm from Cali. I have to be constantly focused on speaking from my diagram instead of my throat, which results in me talking slower and more monotoned. I've really become a poster child surfer dude with my speech...

[Khalysta]

As mtf, my voice coach has me focusing on falsetto exercises and then we blend that with chest voice.   It seems like you would want to do the opposite and focus more on chest exercises and dropping lower.

I think a big thing though is guys are monotone while girls are more sing songy.  Males also emphasize consonants a bit more.  I know my voice coach hits me on those all the time.  A lot of guys are very monotone with few inflections. I think though if you work on the lower chest you will get there in time and naturally without destroying anything.

p.s. underneath the skin - Chill Surfer dude is not a bad voice to have or at least a good start   I'm from So Cal so I hear it a lot

[Sigyn]

I've been working on my cadence and inflection. I'm from SoCal also (OC/San Diego), so having that cadence and tone works well with my accent.

[Peter Pan]

I've started doing this thing where I put two fingers on the spot just above where my collarbones meet in the middle, and push a little (gently, of course). And then I start talking/humming/singing, whatever, and try to get it so that I can feel that the sound is coming from that area. It seems to help. BUT I am not a health expert and whatnot, so I don't know if that could be damaging. Don't trust me lol I don't know what I'm talking about.

I read something that said if you hum with your mouth closed, you should be able to get it so that your mouth doesn't vibrate. If your mouth is vibrating, you're speaking/humming from the wrong place (if you want a deeper voice). So sometimes when I'm about to sing or speak, I do a little hum, and make sure that it's coming from a place that doesn't make my mouth vibrate. I dunno if there's any truth to this, but it seems okay for me.

[Dena]

You are pretty correct on this. With the chest voice, the larynx stays in it's relaxed location. The mouth or head voice will cause it to move up and you can feel the movement when you prepare to speak or sing in that voice. As you stated, the vibrations will also move into the mouth and if you pay attention to it, you can feel the vibrations in the mouth area. For me the difference between these two voices can be 40 to 50 HZ which could be the difference between a female sounding voice and an ambiguous. Using a more mono tone speech pattern will cause the voice to be gendered male. For some reason the human ear needs the combination of some pitch and inflection to gender a voice female. Pitch without inflection tends to be gendered male. inflection without pitch is gay male. This is why it's so hard for those of us going the other way to pass the telephone test.

[Laura_7]

you could have a look at
nyspeechandvoicelab.net/transgender/voice-masculinization
for levels and hints...
and you could try to speak a bit more monotone... less ups and downs of voice, and more direct language...
women tend to use more indirect language like would you... might... etc...


hugs