Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I'd love any tips on singing that anyone may have, thanks! (:

You haven't posted much total information so my responses will be all over the board. I assume you have had some voice training for singing but I don't know if you have your speaking voice worked out yet. If not you should work on that because sometimes people have the range to work across several octaves and retain the ability to sing in both the female and male range.

You also didn't indicate if you are considering voice surgery. I am still in the healing stage and not a singer yet, but if singing after surgery is important, you need to understand exactly what your current voice is and what the surgical results will be. I am surprised that my old voice was unusable for singing but the new voice while still range limited has far more range than the old one.

I spent a couple of months mapping out my old voice and learning about it before deciding I couldn't feminize it. With what I knew, my only option was surgery. You need to map your voice out and decide if you are happy with it or what treatment you desire.

Quote from: BellaAntigone on August 30, 2015, 08:35:38 AM
I'd love any tips on singing that anyone may have, thanks! (:

Can you be a little more specific?  Do you mean singing in a female voice when you're a trans woman? 

A lot of the general voice training exercises you will see online for speech are actually borrowed from singing pedagogy.  So I'd start there and when your speaking voice is getting close to how you want to sound try to transfer that sound over to singing.  I'd be happy to offer more suggestions but I need a little more information :)

Sorry for not including any details, yes I would like to sing in as "female" a voice as possible. I'm pretty confident in my speaking voice  (years of self-study capped by 6 months of therapy), but I'm having a hard time "polishing" my female singing voice. I don't plan on having surgery, I just want to know if there are any exercises or methods that I haven't heard of.

Thanks!

Sorry don't ask me for any advise about singing.

On a scale of 1 to 10

My singing talent is a negative 400 trillion  any way I look at it.

Have a nice day.

I'm actually doing this right now and finally getting results. It's more or less the same as training your voice for speaking but with more emphasis on power, sustain and matching pitch melodically. The fancy stuff like vibrato will come after I've managed to find a consistent singing range. If you're able to drone your voice to a note then you know at least can match the pitch and key.

If I were you I'd look up warm up singing exercises on youtube and find female singers that are in your vocal range so you have an idea as to what to aim for and also sing with them to help strengthen that part of your voice box. 

Don't forget to record yourself and keep practice consistent. As I'm sure you know it's crucial to stay constant with training else you'll lose your progress.

If you can learn an instrument like keyboard or guitar. It'll help you develop a better trained ear so you can double check yourself to make you're in the proper key and pitch.

Quote from: BellaAntigone on August 30, 2015, 03:29:07 PM
Sorry for not including any details, yes I would like to sing in as "female" a voice as possible. I'm pretty confident in my speaking voice  (years of self-study capped by 6 months of therapy), but I'm having a hard time "polishing" my female singing voice. I don't plan on having surgery, I just want to know if there are any exercises or methods that I haven't heard of.

Thanks!

This is something I've been working on for almost two years.  I have made a lot of progress but I'm still not where I'd like to be.  I'll tell you the first thing to do is find an instructor who is aware of your situation and is willing to teach you voice in this range and category.  I had a lot of bad luck with voice coaches who said they could only train me as a tenor.

Of course, taking lessons is very expensive and a huge time commitment so if that isn't an option, I'd tell you your best bet is to research any videos by legit singing coaches who emphasize developing a mixed voice.  The real key to developing a mixed voice is developing a really strong head voice and in the case of trans girls like us, you need to record yourself as often as possible and make your head voice sound strong and full, not weak and breathy like a typical male falsetto.  Once you've gained some strength in head voice there are specific exercises geared towards blending the to registers together.  You need to sing mostly in your mix because head voice alone is not strong enough for powerful singing that will project.  That's not to say you won't use head voice, just that your default voice will most often be in your mix.  One exercise I really liked was a vocal sob.  It sounds ridiculous so I would only do it when you're alone (lol) but try singing scales as though you were stricken with grief and each note comes out as a sob.  Crying naturally engages both sets of muscles needed to mix your voice so it's a good place to start.

Great responses, thanks gals! (:
I'll post more if I learn anything significant!