Susan's Place Transgender Resources

So I do my fair share of research on things I am trying learn mostly which has recently been voice changing since I have to wait for HRT and voice therapy for a little while still and I figured it never hurts to start early with this.
I ran into this article today: http://lena.kiev.ua/voice/
This seems so to go in against some other things I read about but it does seem to make some sense to me after reading trough it so I figured it doesn't hurt trying.

I've been trying to follow the described steps and trying my best to understand the article but so far I'm having a little trouble with getting control of the muscles. I can hold the muscles after swallowing but I am unable to breathe when I do so and so far am unable to do the movement without swallowing. I've only been trying for a like an hour or so and am probably just being impatient :P but also wanted to share it with you girls and see your opinions about it, who knows perhaps it does work or atleast help a bit.

Interesting read.. I'll look into it.
I should point out however that hormones will do nothing for a mtf voice... unfortunately.

Quote from: Sarah Rose on January 16, 2014, 04:07:59 PM
Interesting read.. I'll look into it.
I should point out however that hormones will do nothing for a mtf voice... unfortunately.

depends on your voice , but still yeah the chances are slim...

Quote from: Sarah Rose on January 16, 2014, 04:07:59 PM
Interesting read.. I'll look into it.
I should point out however that hormones will do nothing for a mtf voice... unfortunately.

Oh I'm aware of that, I just mentioned it to give an idea of the state of "waiting" I am currently in. Thanks for being helpful though. ;D

I came to a similar conclusion after reading around alot, cannot remember the exact source. I get a kind of false voice when trying to talk and singing words, singing just vowels is fine though. Haven't found a pitch I'm comfortable at nor can I keep my voice for long, goes away into harsh sounds after a while. Ah well I guess I just need more training  :P

The article was interesting and a good addition I think  :)

I wish they would change the male voice though... it would make things much easier.
I always get nervous practicing my voice, I hate hearing it... That alone makes it hard to practice.


I'll give this a try though.

Very interesting! I still need to start my voice training so thanks for the link Amy!

Heh. This is precisely the technique that I did through intuition all those years ago. JSYK, if you can get the trick of it (and there *is* more than just the muscular rearrangement like lilt and tilt of the phonemes) you never, *ever* get misgendered.

Ι didnt quite understand what I need to do...

can someone explain? with easy words or somethin  :-\

This is basically the same method I used to train my voice just with different information to get there. Sadly I can't find the link to the material I used...

For a month or two, I didn't actually say a great deal, instead just focusing on controlling those muscles. It's what gives you absolute control over your voice, and I'd say it's easily the most important part in mtf voice training. And like any muscle, you need to keep using it for it to stay strong and under control. Every morning I still need to 'stretch' my vocal muscles for a few minutes.

I may also note, if you do get your voice into the correct shape, it's impossible ( at least for me ) to sound male. That was a huge shock! :).

There's also much more which goes on top of it, learning to control head resonance, timbre, twang. But you can worry about those later.

P.S. It's not a shortcut. It'll still take a minimum of many months to start sounding like a girl. :)

Interesting find, thank you for posting this, more information to digest. This is one of the hardest things it seems for me is to get into a female voice and stay there, I keep slipping out, so perhaps going about it this way might work better.

@FalsePrincess
Learn to pull your adam's apple upwards and backwards, using the same muscle that pulls it up when you swallow. Hope it helps somewhat  :)

I found this useful too.

I've been forcing my voice box up, but pulling it back gave an instant added femaleness to my voice. It still needs a lot of work, but I think this is really helpful.

Woah, I think I've been accidentally doing this, or at least something close, for a while. I will occasionally say something and it will have a softer tone to it, completely randomly. Often accompanied by weird looks from friends :-\. Great to know the reason behind it.

Ugh, I showed the article to my boyfriend and it took him like 10 minutes to learn it.
I am still unable to do it after several hours of trying and it's making me feel rather depressed.

Definitely trying this out but when I try to get opinions I get told my male voice is pretty much girly as is. I just fear people are being nice.

Quote from: KittyKat on January 17, 2014, 12:45:43 PM
Definitely trying this out but when I try to get opinions I get told my male voice is pretty much girly as is. I just fear people are being nice.

I know the feeling....
I've been on edge wondering if I should start trying to use my voice at work... but... even if it does pass my average call is 10-20minutes so I might not be able to hold the voice the whole time.
(I'm a computer support tech/over the phone)

Quote from: Sarah Rose on January 17, 2014, 12:55:52 PM
I know the feeling....
I've been on edge wondering if I should start trying to use my voice at work... but... even if it does pass my average call is 10-20minutes so I might not be able to hold the voice the whole time.
(I'm a computer support tech/over the phone)

Yeah, don't.  It just confuses the customers, which you can't afford if you are being evaluated by customer surveys.  In person, the predominince of vision, helps a deep voice sound sufficiently female.  But over the phone, almost nobody can do a passable female voice.  This is aggravated by the fact that most women raise their voices even higher when talking on the phone.  I found that, even using a clearly male voice, my speech patterns and inflections were such that people would call me Maam, and then correct to Sir, and be embarassed.  So, for phone work, I wound up using a deep voice, and actually trying to sound male.

And yeah, even fresh-voiced, when I was trying to sound female, it's hard to keep it up for a 30 minute call, and that can make a real mess.

bookmarked your link. It sounds like it is worth a shot.  :)

Having a pronounced Adam's apple myself, I learned long ago that pulling the apple up and back both hides it and raises the voice nicely. I've never found it something I could do constantly without letting it slip back down, though. It would take great will power to keep it tucked up long enough, but I suppose eventually the muscles would adjust to that position and you would stay that way when relaxed. As mentioned in the article, though, it probably beats the risk of surgery if you can pull it off.

Wow Amy thanks for posting.
Carrie

Yes definately thanks for posting that techique. I've begun practicing and with a little luck I won't need voice surgery. ;)

Quote from: Amy on January 16, 2014, 04:02:08 PM
So I do my fair share of research on things I am trying learn mostly which has recently been voice changing since I have to wait for HRT and voice therapy for a little while still and I figured it never hurts to start early with this.
I ran into this article today: http://lena.kiev.ua/voice/
This seems so to go in against some other things I read about but it does seem to make some sense to me after reading trough it so I figured it doesn't hurt trying.

I've been trying to follow the described steps and trying my best to understand the article but so far I'm having a little trouble with getting control of the muscles. I can hold the muscles after swallowing but I am unable to breathe when I do so and so far am unable to do the movement without swallowing. I've only been trying for a like an hour or so and am probably just being impatient :P but also wanted to share it with you girls and see your opinions about it, who knows perhaps it does work or at least help a bit.

Lena is a member here, who occasionally posts in the voice topics on the Voice Therapy board

I am sure she will answer questions from you.

Her profile: https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php?action=profile;u=27565

You get used to the muscular position. My adams apple has been up and out of sight for years and years and years and I can't even move it down without a lot of effort. Just give it some time.

I actually ran across this article the other day. I've been practicing the principles described within it since then and have had some success. Not much though but I've only been working with it for two or three days. I suspect this is something that takes a littke time to master. However the few times I've been able to hold my voicebox up and back like it says and speak my voice was more femminine. ;)

Quote from: GinaDouglas on January 21, 2014, 09:42:18 PM
Yeah, don't.  It just confuses the customers, which you can't afford if you are being evaluated by customer surveys.  In person, the predominince of vision, helps a deep voice sound sufficiently female. But over the phone, almost nobody can do a passable female voice.  This is aggravated by the fact that most women raise their voices even higher when talking on the phone.  I found that, even using a clearly male voice, my speech patterns and inflections were such that people would call me Maam, and then correct to Sir, and be embarassed.  So, for phone work, I wound up using a deep voice, and actually trying to sound male.

And yeah, even fresh-voiced, when I was trying to sound female, it's hard to keep it up for a 30 minute call, and that can make a real mess.

I can confirm managing an extremely passable voice over the phone; I started voice training at age 25 (I am 28 now) and I am also capable of a deep, masculine voice. I talk for hours on end on a nearly daily basis. There is another member on the site who is 45 (I think, or thereabouts) and has a very passable voice, too. There are several more in the "Is my voice passable?" thread. I'm not sure how age affects voice transition. I've heard there is a "second puberty" around age 45, so anyone who is still not on HRT at that age may have a further thickening or lengthening of their vocal cords.

I think the current methods out for trans woman voice training are confusing, incomplete, and not terribly informative. I really do think that many more trans women could manage a passable voice. The majority of passability, especially on the phone, revolves around resonance. The exercise linked to at the beginning of this thread almost unanimously focuses on resonance, and it does work -- though it isn't as much of a "shortcut" as it seems, it takes a bit of warm up time and repeat muscle training to really grasp.

I am not simply coming into the thread to be frustrating or to pursue dispute; I would love to share what I know, but it is complex and I am still learning despite having a completely passable, varied, normalized voice for a good length of time now. I have tried to share in the past, but I found that my explanations were too confusing -- a result of my own lack of complete understanding. I only want to encourage people to keep trying and to support methods like the one linked in this thread, which I do find to be extremely helpful.

Quote from: Sybil on January 24, 2014, 06:08:18 PM
I am not simply coming into the thread to be frustrating or to pursue dispute; I would love to share what I know, but it is complex and I am still learning despite having a completely passable, varied, normalized voice for a good length of time now. I have tried to share in the past, but I found that my explanations were too confusing -- a result of my own lack of complete understanding. I only want to encourage people to keep trying and to support methods like the one linked in this thread, which I do find to be extremely helpful.

The thing is, even if you understand completely, it seems nearly impossible to share effectively. I find language (especially conlangs) to be quite interesting but, when doing research on them I noticed something sort of startling about English, it simply lacks words to describe certain sorts of things. What I mean by this is, color for example is a totally abstract thing, we can only define it by what it is like, when I say a red car you think in your mind what your conception of red is, be it the color of a rose, or brick or whatever. I can describe shades of color only because you have seen those shades and there is at least some consensus as to what "teal" or "seafoam green" is. Now, try describing a smell that someone has never smelled before, unless it smells like something else, and you can use that association there really isn't a meaningful way to do so in English.

This seems to be a large part of the problem with describing these methods to people, we don't really have precise words for muscle control. Sure just like smells we have some basic generalized things, but telling someone to move their adams apple up and back, while somewhat informative is like telling someone to drive a car by getting in it and going; close but there are alot of specifics along the way. The thing is we can break down driving a car to really precise steps with our language but for something like moving a muscle we just don't seem to have anything that precise.

In a way I feel this problem in analogous to a programming language, if we could assign a muscle the value of V and then say contract V by 10 units, we could get to rather exact precision on what we mean just like we do with a computer, but not only do human bodies work differently we have no methods by which we can measure things precisely, you can grip lightly with your hand or as hard as you can, but we really seem to fail at doing a 37% grip, where would that even be? This seems to lead to thousands of attempts at replicating what was told for me, and then once I do it right it just "clicks" I can feel the steps to do, but I really don't have words to describe them much like trying to explain to someone who has never eaten meat, what chicken smells like, I wouldn't have the words to describe it, but I do indeed know what it smells like myself.

Sorry for the rant, merely attempting to point out that the problem likely isn't you; I am not too certain anyone can accurately explain precision muscle movements that aren't visible with current language. I note that on "Finding your female voice" Andrea James relies on building the similarity of feeling from simple vocal exercises to the complex ones to attempt to let the viewer gain some understanding, but even that isn't really 100%. I have the feeling this problem will be around for some time, at least with the rough instructions, practice, and trial and error it seems that people can pick it up.

Quote from: Sybil on January 24, 2014, 06:08:18 PMI think the current methods out for trans woman voice training are confusing, incomplete, and not terribly informative. I really do think that many more trans women could manage a passable voice. The majority of passability, especially on the phone, revolves around resonance. The exercise linked to at the beginning of this thread almost unanimously focuses on resonance, and it does work -- though it isn't as much of a "shortcut" as it seems, it takes a bit of warm up time and repeat muscle training to really grasp.

What I've found so far, in terms of resources to feminize my voice, remind me a lot of these books I used to read when I was in grade school called "Ed Emberly's Guide to Drawing". All the exercises were broken down into three steps. IE. Step One: Draw a line. Step Two: Draw a circle. Step Three: A completed and incredibly detailed drawing of Buckingham Palace. That frustrated the crap out of 7 year old me, much like all the voice resources out there frustrate me now.

Regarding this shortcut, I can pull my adams apple up and back, and hold it there. But, I can't breathe at the same time, let alone talk, and when I try my adams apple just falls back down. So, I feel like there are critical steps I'm missing, and I don't know what they are. FRUSTRATING!

Quote from: Victoria Mitchell on January 24, 2014, 04:54:08 PM
You get used to the muscular position. My adams apple has been up and out of sight for years and years and years and I can't even move it down without a lot of effort. Just give it some time.

That's interesting. Well, here we have a technique and an actual testimonial that it works. I'll have to get back to it consistently. I find it easy to forget after awhile and let it slip back down, though. We'll see.

I have been trying to practice with pulling the Adams apple up and back. But I seem to really limit my breathing intake when I do this. Am I doing this correctly?

Quote from: Natallie553 on January 25, 2014, 09:41:23 AM
I have been trying to practice with pulling the Adams apple up and back. But I seem to really limit my breathing intake when I do this. Am I doing this correctly?

Well, everyone's anatomy is a bit different. I wouldn't continue it if it caused breathing difficulty. When I do it I can breath fine. I do find I need to keep my neck pretty straight and my neck lengthens when I do it.

I already had a pretty decent voice, but playing with this technique for a couple days has given me a broader range, especially while singing....I am able to hit notes that I was not able to before. I also find that it is easier to slip into my voice this way, without the initial period of adjustment that I would have to deal with if I hadn't spoken in quite a while.

All in all a very valuable addition to my regular voice techniques, and I am SO glad that I found this post!

I can move my adams apple up like when I swallow, but doing so seems to use the same muscles as I would when I swallow, which makes me shut my airway (and makes it impossible to talk or breath), so I must be doing something wrong.
Also, I feel like I'm moving it up, but not back.

Any tips on how to do it correctly?

So for now I'm just practicing holding it up and back. I'm going to get used to this before I try too much speaking. It's just too difficult to do this all at once. I'm hoping that once I train the muscles to hold my larinx up and back learning to speak this way will be easier. ;)

Quote from: Thylacin on January 25, 2014, 11:57:57 AM
I can move my adams apple up like when I swallow, but doing so seems to use the same muscles as I would when I swallow, which makes me shut my airway (and makes it impossible to talk or breath), so I must be doing something wrong.
Also, I feel like I'm moving it up, but not back.

Any tips on how to do it correctly?

About all I can suggest it to keep your fingers on it to monitor yourself and try to keep it in the right place. Perhaps if you play around with it long enough you'll find a way to draw it up without shutting the airway. I can't even shut mine off if I try when I do it. Once again, it could be anatomical differences or it could be just a matter of practice.

Quote from: Allyda on January 25, 2014, 11:58:39 AM
So for now I'm just practicing holding it up and back. I'm going to get used to this before I try too much speaking. It's just too difficult to do this all at once. I'm hoping that once I train the muscles to hold my larinx up and back learning to speak this way will be easier. ;)

That's what I was doing at first but after quite a bit more trying and such I've managed to separate what happens and I seem to have some control over the muscles now. I can pull it up quite easily now but pulling it to the back is quite hard and straining as if it needs a lot of force.

I'm pretty convinced it works, it's just taking me a lot of practice and trying. :P

This the method I use now, when I first started working on my voice I did the falsetto trick, but never really worked.

A lot of it also is re-saying a lot of words over and over till you get the sound down. Honestly I don't think this is a short cut and voice training is ongoing.

Quote from: Oh The Humanity! on January 24, 2014, 04:35:34 PM
Lena is a member here, who occasionally posts in the voice topics on the Voice Therapy board

I am sure she will answer questions from you.

Her profile: https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php?action=profile;u=27565

:o I only just found out there is a voice therapy board, I feel silly now.

*runs off in shame to read stuff in the voice therapy board*

Quote from: Aina on January 25, 2014, 03:12:49 PM
This the method I use now, when I first started working on my voice I did the falsetto trick, but never really worked.

A lot of it also is re-saying a lot of words over and over till you get the sound down. Honestly I don't think this is a short cut and voice training is ongoing.

Agreed. This method takes alot of practice and effort at least in the beginning. I think what the OP was intending to show was that it can be done without engaging the services of a voice therapist and/or surgery. And on that note I agree with her. ;)

Quote from: Amy on January 25, 2014, 01:32:33 PM
That's what I was doing at first but after quite a bit more trying and such I've managed to separate what happens and I seem to have some control over the muscles now. I can pull it up quite easily now but pulling it to the back is quite hard and straining as if it needs a lot of force.

I'm pretty convinced it works, it's just taking me a lot of practice and trying. :P

Maybe thats my issue with limited breathing while doing this. My muscles are not use to this change yet and will need to adapt.  Do you have any tips that you've discovered?

So much to learn  :laugh:

Quote from: Allyda on January 25, 2014, 04:06:44 PM
Agreed. This method takes alot of practice and effort at least in the beginning. I think what the OP was intending to show was that it can be done without engaging the services of a voice therapist and/or surgery. And on that note I agree with her. ;)

Honestly some of the very best voices I've heard are people who have not gone to any kind of voice therapist and done it themselves. Now I am not saying you can't get a fantastic voice through professional training. I am guessing there are just more people who don't have or wish to spend the money.

Pushing up and back on my adam's apple doesn't change my voice, but it does hurt. But placing my finger above it and pushing upward does, anyone else?

Just printed the article, will get my female voice done tonight. Then me and Elvis will retire to the east wing of my compound for a relaxing night cap. Thank you... Thank you very muuuuch!   ::)

I've heard a lot of people suggesting finding a feminine timbre in falsetto, then lowering the pitch until you cross back into your modal register. the idea is you keep the same shape in your modal voice that you had in falsetto.

I recently came across a great technique that works wonders for me, by just adding one element to the technique above. When I lower my falsetto all the way, I start whispering in my girly-sounding falsetto, and without stopping I switch into my regular register, all the while keeping the same voicebox shape. The whispering really helps cross over the passagio. Hope that helps!

Quote from: Natallie553 on January 25, 2014, 07:50:52 PM
Maybe thats my issue with limited breathing while doing this. My muscles are not use to this change yet and will need to adapt.  Do you have any tips that you've discovered?

So much to learn  :laugh:

I did find something that was a bit helpful in getting some more control of it. If you make a sound (just humming or something) when you try to move the voice box up you can feel the source of the vibrations move or atleast I can, the sound also changes when you do it and it helped me find the position and go back to it easier.

Yes it sounds silly sometimes and I do spend a lot of time giggling at the silly sounds I make myself but I guess that's part of it. :P

Quote from: Amy on January 29, 2014, 03:42:19 PM
I did find something that was a bit helpful in getting some more control of it. If you make a sound (just humming or something) when you try to move the voice box up you can feel the source of the vibrations move or atleast I can, the sound also changes when you do it and it helped me find the position and go back to it easier.

Yes it sounds silly sometimes and I do spend a lot of time giggling at the silly sounds I make myself but I guess that's part of it. :P

Thats not a bad idea at all! Advice taken.  ;D