Vocal Training

[Omika]

I've been training my voice pretty avidly for the past four days, and the back of my throat is starting to feel kind of funny.  Almost like it's swollen or strained.  Is this what my mom meant when she used to chide me for imitating voices by saying, "If you keep doing that, it'll get stuck."?  I think it's working.  My range seems fairly high, but it sounds sort of...  untuned.  It's like trying to tune a viola to sound like a violin.

[Hazumu]

STOP IT!

YOU'LL HURT YOUR THROAT!

YOU ALREADY HAVE!

Let your voice rest.

Developing a female voice from voice apparatus that underwent a testosterone puberty takes 6 months to a year for the majority of MtFs.  You have plenty of time, do it right.  And it's better to do several short sessions during the day/week than, say, one long session a day.  My car is my practice area, for example.

BTW, your metaphor is accurate.  What you have to do is get the viola body to resonate like the violin by minimising the resonances that are viola-like and enhancing the resonance of the parts of the viola that can sound violin-like.

Look for three voice feminization programs:
Andrea James' Finding your Female voice
Melanie Phillips' How to Develop a Female Voice
Exceptional Voice's Fundamentals of your Feminine Voice

Of the three, I think the last one best teaches you how to produce the proper resonance.

You may be 'blessed' with the skill/intuition/equipment/luck to find the right combination that works on your own, or you may need a guide to show you the road.  Even if the former, formally learning how to produce the right resonance and formally practicing these techniques will pay big dividends down the road.

Make haste more slowly!

Karen

[Melissa]

For a free guide I put together right here on the forums, see:

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,5929.0.html

Also, as Karen said it takes time and you may become frustrated at first.  Start by trying to get it close and then finetune it from there.

Melissa

[Omika]

Eeeee, don't yell!  I got it.  It's why I asked, I wasn't sure.  Thank you, though.  I'll check those three out, and since it's apparently possible to get this voice thing to work, I'll take it slow.  I just want to figure out a routine that I can stick to, you know?  Doesn't matter how long it takes, I've plenty of time.

[Laurry]

Eeeee, don't yell!  I got it.

Hey Blair.

Ya know, telling a room (or board) full of women not to yell only makes things worse.   >  As a woman, you should know that.  Even the female part of me gets bristled, and I'm a sweetheart (at least that's what I tell everyone whether they believe it or not);  the male part of me just shakes his head and waits for the axe to fall...tsk tsk tsk

Hugs.....Laurie