Help with voice

[tesseract49]

Hi everyone. I have progressively spoken more soft and femininely for the last year and my partner tells me that I already sound good. I want to improve my voice further though. Is it possible to actually increase my modal range without surgery? Also, if I practise speaking at a pitch of about 200hz on average which is about as high as I can comfortably speak, will that help? will I adjust and get used to it and will it become easier over time with practise? Thank you very much  xxx

[Dena]

First you should listen to your partner as she is very skilled in these matters. Next as you use your voice you will gain some range but there are limits to what you can gain. My voice required surgery to hit the female range and before I saw the doctor, he targeted 190 Hz for my voice. I may have ended up with about 20 Hz more than that but we still can't measure the final voice. I am enclosing a chart that will help you see that 200 Hz is the acceptable range. Also don't forget that many women do have lower voices and a voice that is to high can cause problems as well. You want a voice that just mixes with the other voices that are out there.

http://www.nyspeechandvoicelab.net/transgender/voice-feminization/

[anjaq]

I like these graphs as well.




from http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5908

They also show that the average female voice at age 40 is not really at 220 Hz anymore and actually the average in total is more like 200 Hz with probably about 50% below 200 Hz and half of that below 185 Hz. So personally I think having a 180 or even a 170 Hz voice still is very much ok as a target for a voice feminization. This puts less long term strain on the voice compared to pushing it to 200 Hz but still is well within a female range. Of course , other parameters are important - resonance and all that, if those are ok, a 170 Hz voice will be perfectly female.

[Laura_7]

You could:
-try to speak a bit more breathy
-some people find some kind of register, between the male voice and a falsetto (Mickey Mouse) voice.
This might be expanded upon, upwards or downwards, with practise.
Meaning a natural sounding voice with a range higher or lower, as practised.

There is a pc program called overtone analyzer.
here is a graph of a result and links to a few more hints:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,195929.msg1744848.html#msg1744848

The left half of the graph is male voice, the right one female voice.

With practise undertones below 150 hz can be avoided. Its possible to directly see the results.

[iKate]

It's possible. Not that many trans women get voice surgery. Most who have passable voices do training. Julie Vu (Princess Joules on YouTube) for example is a trained voice. I believe Brynn Tannehill (LGBT activist and columnist for the Huffington Post) is as well.

[tesseract49]

Thank you so much! I am seriously thinking of using overtone analyser. I already do the breathy thing. I suppose I have a totally passable voice already, in partner's opinion, but it varies and it's hard to remember how to do it xxxx

[Dena]

Remembering how to do it is a habit. The first few months you have to remember to use the new voice all the time but after a while, you don't think about it anymore. I used my trained voice for 35 years and I wanted to drop back to my original voice for some data before voice surgery and I discovered I had forgot how to use the old voice. Playing around, I found it and got the data I wanted. Just be patient and keep working at it. Soon the new voice will become your default voice.

[Laura_7]

Thank you so much! I am seriously thinking of using overtone analyser. I already do the breathy thing. I suppose I have a totally passable voice already, in partner's opinion, but it varies and it's hard to remember how to do it xxxx

You could try to record the voice, and listen to it.

You could also try out a few things and listen how it sounds on the recording.

A bit more breathy voice makes a difference...
speaking a bit less loud...
less direct language.. would you.. could you...
more intonation within words, and for example at the end of a sentence...

and imo just feeling feminine... its some kind of feeling... it shows in voice, and also in mannerism...
not exaggerated gestures and language but a simple feeling of being oneself...


*hugs*

[anjaq]

Lol, yes, I was also having these issues as well. I tried to get a recording of my old voice and could not find it because I did not use it for a long long time. I found it eventually, too. But yes, changing the voice can become semi-permanent when it is formed as a habit.