Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Sorry if this is the wrong section.

Been practicing the last three days for about 15 minutes on and off and using my computer to record myself the freebie sound recorder on windows.

I dont have any recordings since im rougher than a log and my vocal cords are still a little breaky although im not pushing myself to hard right now.

I have been using a spectrogram and markers set in the 170 to 220Hz range i seem to be a find range of 175 to 195 more comfortable although speaking words is a real challenge, from your experiences is this range sort of ok and good? im not pushing myself to hard just seeying if this range is the perfect range or what range i should hit for.

The spectogram and the hz range i found on the TS roadmap site and has helped me greatly but im still a little confused if im hitting the right range or not, but i can sound when i did record myself i sounded a little more feminine but i could still hear my own voice but higher.

Not expecting an over night miracle but if the 170 to 220 range is the ideal range when i will try to keep that going i didnt find though that the TS roadmap site said the starting note is A220 which i gather is A @ 220hz does that mean i should be aiming for 220hz + for my vocal range?.

Im out of work no money to buy help CD#s or books so im doing this the old way helpfull hints, guides and practice at home with neighbours and thin walls in a flat lol when i say thin i mean, plaster, wire meshing safety lattice work, then brick with a small hollow cavities in the wire mesh, due to that i cant put shelves up no drill go through the lattice work grrr. (off topic i apologize :P)

I can hit it but its not exactly comfortable for me to hold a cord or a note on it without it straining and breaking a little but again i think i can hit the 220+ comfortable over time with more practice but for the time being the 170 to 220 range is working ok so far for me, it took a day or two just humming up and down, i cant say i tried to falsetto to high as i couldnt hit it at first but i still have not tried to hit it just yet.

Also trying to speak in a monotone manner as the basic practice on the youtube video i watched numerous times is very hard and im having problems with saying words since im from manchester in the UK and to many years of slurring words and picked up slang makes my pronuciation rather arg but im confident i will get there but any tips will would be great i sort of dont speak massiviley monotone but i do get my words messed up because of female head voice, male voice, and an accent picked up in the last 9 years all muddling things its a bit of a mess :P

But for the first time in a long while practicing my voice, learning my walk im smiling it maybe in the privacy of my home right now but when i practice the voice or try to be myself with walking i dont feel depressed i guess this is normal but i just feel so picked up and motivated now, all i want to do is get done with this stop smoking and go sort my debts out (through a debt management company) so all i have to do is inform them of name change if i get that far with the NHS route etc etc and i dont have to worry about that getting in the way as long as they are being paid off it shouldnt matter what gender i am but it also saves me talking to them on the phone :P

Im no where near passable with my voice but i do feel im making a really good progress and my mood and spirits are more lifted and i feel more and more like the real me.

Sorry for the long post just felt like sharing some of the good points its not all doom and gloom for me making progress an accepting girl friend and so many things that will take a few months to sort out but i hope in a few months i will have a resonable female voice   :).

I have no idea about hz ranges but I find CandiFLA on youtube is very good at explaining how to train your voice. I like this vid with the spanner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7qSJ19f_QU# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7qSJ19f_QU#)

beats spending money on CDs / MP3s. i can manage falsettos quite easily after singing too much micheal jackson and the darkness songs lol.

I watched through those videos and found them to many to follow with every part as seperate hence just using an all in one video i found that covered the basics and looked up other information i can hit the falsetto's without much problem or the point of very high in a single note but im not wanting to push to high since im rebuilding my upper cord use since years of smoking, and not using them much has sort of left them massivly out of practice.

But for the moment im satisfied with the progress i am making using the TSroadmaps basic information, but still the question still lays out there am i ment to go higher than 220 hz or stay in the 170 to 220 range :)

I think it's more important to find a comfortable pitch to work with rather than trying to go as high as possible. certainly I sound more fem when I barely change the pitch of my voice and just work on the resonance.

But then I think we all find slightly different ways to do this.

my voice is rapidly becomming accustomed to the 170 to 220 range i dont really want to go any higher than that since its more comfortable, been practicing keeping my adams apple excercised without speaking by faking humming the pitch to about 175 - 180 ish hz, i even felt a tighten in the lower part of my voice box and the upper was becomming way more easier to engage.

At that point i had to stop and rest my voice so i didnt get stuck to high, but i am finding just having a chat with a friend today my voice started slipping into the upper notes i have been excercising and rebuilding up, i dont think i had a massivly deep voice but the throat control lessons are helping quite a bit, although still way to much to do get things right one thing i cant do right now is get my voice stuck in the new F3- G3 range and my normal voice go totally out.

Although i think in a few weeks time i should be able to get full control and choose when i switch in and out untill im ready to go full time in my transition just working on the core parts.

My girlfriend is sort of curious to hear the final result since i have been asking her alot of questions on paino cord notes and explanation she is the musical one not me lol.

Making great progress and every time i get more and more better from being shya bout trying it in the flat since thin walls i feel so happy which is the thing i havent felt in years due to slowly becomming my true self :)

Gaining control in the higher frequencies is important to achieve the proper resonance so you don't sound like Mickey Mouse.  You can tell you are getting there when you start to gain enough control over the muscles of your soft pallet that it feels as if you are yawing when you speak. It just takes practice. I started worked on my female voice 13 months ago- I could barely hit 195 hz. An hour a day of Deep Stealth and Melanie Speaks exercises for six months and then I switched to singing. I analyzed myself singing the Do- Re- Me song last week with Spectrogram and I can hit 500 hz now!

Audacity is an excellent free soundwave analyzer that actually lets you see the amplitude over the frequency range. I find it much more helpful than just working on keeping my pitch in the 170-220 hz range with Spectrogram. You can download a copy here:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)


I

interesting

Quote from: Virginia on April 04, 2010, 08:11:36 PM
Gaining control in the higher frequencies is important to achieve the proper resonance so you don't sound like Mickey Mouse.  You can tell you are getting there when you start to gain enough control over the muscles of your soft pallet that it feels as if you are yawing when you speak. It just takes practice. I started worked on my female voice 13 months ago- I could barely hit 195 hz. An hour a day of Deep Stealth and Melanie Speaks exercises for six months and then I switched to singing. I analyzed myself singing the Do- Re- Me song last week with Spectrogram and I can hit 500 hz now!

Audacity is an excellent free soundwave analyzer that actually lets you see the amplitude over the frequency range. I find it much more helpful than just working on keeping my pitch in the 170-220 hz range with Spectrogram. You can download a copy here:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)


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Thank you for the pointers i think i will take things a little more slowly, audacity is not a bad program have used it in the past but its not a program i get on with very well.

All i can say is if i go to high over 220 i sound pinched and forced and more on the lines of to fake, im still learning and i hope i can gain more control in abouts a months time so i can actually be able to speak properly.

But again in time i maybe able to go higher but im working with forum posts, and youtube video's, and bits and pieces of information scattered on google searchs to try to piece together my own training with no cost.

But i am using the Deep Stealth free hand book and using some of the excercises now that i understand them.

Ok so, this is basically what I did (and you can hear what I was able to accomplish doing this here http://rapidshare.com/files/372135664/voicechange.mp3 (http://rapidshare.com/files/372135664/voicechange.mp3))

I started much the same as you, just experimenting for a couple minutes very infrequently (though I was like once every month or so because I hated how I sounded).

I never worried too much about the pitch values though. Pitch is only a pretty small part of sounding female, it's far more to do with modulation/resonance of the sound of your voice than the actual pitch. You can use audacity (same program I used) to make the pitch of your voice sound higher, but you still won't sound female, nor would a female sound male in doing the reverse, because there's much more too it than that.

Now, this is just what I did to change my voice as it sounds in the link above. I don't really know if I sound good or not (people say I do but I can't help but feel like they're telling me what I want to hear) and what I did may for all I know not work for you.

I never did much of any "practicing" or "training" or anything on my voice, by the time it sounded almost the same as it does above there, I hadn't even realized. My mother didn't even realize my voice had changed at all until I showed her the comparison, leaving her utterly shocked, because it had happened so gradually over about a couple month timeframe she hadn't noticed any point where it suddenly changed.

What I did, was I simply tried to sound female. Any time I was where nobody could hear me, I would verbalize whatever I was thinking while trying, not very hard but very subtly, to make it sound somewhat feminine to me. If you do that long enough I think the voice muscles just change on their own. Now it's at a point where I can't actually sound like I used too any more even if I try too. I can sound reasonably male if I try too, but not for long periods of time before it slips back, and not in the same way as I used too. I suspect I'd probably have to do exactly what I did to sound female only to sound male in order to get it back again (not that I ever intend to do that  ;D).

So anyway, eventually after doing that for a little while, it started to sound at least androgynous when I wasn't even trying, and androgynous leaning female when I was. It was around that point that I started trying to sound that way not only to myself but also too select people I met around me.

A little while after that it changed more onto the female side of things (i hope, lol, I refuse to say I sound female for risk of tempting god) and it was at that point I became confident enough that it had changed to show my mother audio clips of me before and after, and she was utterly blown away.

My advise would be to forget about pitch, and just try to sound what you think is the most female way you can speak for prolonged periods of time, and just start using it. If not around other people, then just to yourself. Use a recorder if you like to see how you sound.

Another tip I would give, there are some great things on youtube to help you, specifically the advice to go as high pitch as you can do comfortably, and sit there.

But don't worry too much about pitch range. There are TONS of girls with low pitch voices and tons of girls with high pitch voices. Now yes, pitch is a factor, it's not unimportant, and a pitch way outside the norm for your presenting gender will draw attention, although likely not attention that would out you, just attention generally. But what will absolutely make 90% of the difference is resonance, which is the actual sound of your voice, the same sort of thing that differentiates the way you personally sound, as opposed to any body else, also determines the way your gender is read. Far more so than pitch.


In my opinion (and that's all it is, it may very well be a bit dependent on your preexisting vocal characteristics... your mileage may vary), voice training courses are a complete waste of money. I've never taken one, the instructions I used to get started were a couple youtube videos.


This one is the one I usually link people too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciWIzpW_X20# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciWIzpW_X20#)

Quote from: Ashley4214 on April 05, 2010, 12:04:10 AM
This one is the one I usually link people too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciWIzpW_X20# (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciWIzpW_X20#)

Thank you for the pointers very helpfull.

I was about to post i was having issues with pushing my voice up out of my chest highest i can get it is into my neck not the chest without straining myself to much, but since i was typing i accidently did push it up and felt which muscles were being used so i can hopefully work on it, im getting there though.

Not sure if getting the voice into the neck is right for the head voice but my chest vibrations minimize enough and i can feel my cheeks if only slightly vibrating but not like a diesel engine lol

And that happens at the A3 220 Hz range maybe a little over but im finding it dead easy to slip into higher pitchs now and talking with a normal voice.

Should also add 220Hz range and over my mouth feels like im semi yawning not sure if the right description but there is a big difference in my normal mouth movements will keep working on it.

As for me recording my voice maybe one day when i have got things right but right now i sound worse than a bear with a sore head lol.

I am happy some of the things I have learned may be helpful to you.  I spent over 100 hours in public pre-HRT presenting as a woman and was only clocked twice. I am extremely proud of my voice and am sure it is one of the reasons I pass so easily.

Developing the muscles in your throat to achieve a female resonance will greatly improve the way you sound. The only way to do that is to gain control over a much broader frequency range. I found these links in another forum that show typical female voice characteristics:

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi739.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fxx37%2Fnymphblossom%2FSpec.jpg&hash=b1c117cd6f17dbf55daddbfb992877ac952f148f)

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi739.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fxx37%2Fnymphblossom%2FMe.jpg&hash=a8a3c1a127f2cc6692ed235f5672d759b3e45129)


As others have said, it is not all about about the actual voice. Inflection, speech pattern, choice of words are all extremely important.  After a little over a year, so much of this is just becoming  apart of the way I express myself girl or guy.

Quote from: Virginia on April 05, 2010, 04:24:04 AM
As others have said, it is not all about about the actual voice. Inflection, speech pattern, choice of words are all extremely important.  After a little over a year, so much of this is just becoming  apart of the way I express myself girl or guy.

My belief is the exact opposite of that.

You take a woman and have her use a male manner of speaking, male inflection, male choice of words, etc. She will STILL sound unmistakably female. Female with a very masculine way of speaking yeah, but definitely female.

My opinion... inflection, manner of speaking and choice of words is pretty much utterly irrelevant as far as your voice being 'read' as male or female. It'll matter as far as being read as being a masculine or feminine personality absolutely, but read as actually BEING male or female, not a chance.

I mean, I'm sorry if you take offense to this but I really want to say it because I know quite a few people believe this.

Do you really think if you took your average young woman with an average sounding female voice, and had her speak "like" a man, as in i dunno, monotonous, direct in their phrasing, etc, that anyone for one single moment hearing only their voice is going to think they're a man?

I sure don't.

Vice versa also applies.

Ashley4214 wrote:
Do you really think if you took your average young woman with an average sounding female voice, and had her speak "like" a man, as in i dunno, monotonous, direct in their phrasing, etc, that anyone for one single moment hearing only their voice is going to think they're a man?

By her voice alone, as if over the phone without any other gender cues, she would be taken for a man. In the male dominant US society, you are always assumed to be a man unless you give another person a reason to doubt it.

Quote from: Virginia on April 05, 2010, 05:22:45 AM
Ashley4214 wrote:
Do you really think if you took your average young woman with an average sounding female voice, and had her speak "like" a man, as in i dunno, monotonous, direct in their phrasing, etc, that anyone for one single moment hearing only their voice is going to think they're a man?

By her voice alone, as if over the phone without any other gender cues, she would be taken for a man. In the male dominant US society, you are always assumed to be a man unless you give another person a reason to doubt it.

The problem is you ARE giving the person reason to doubt it. That reason is that you SOUND LIKE A GIRL. lol

But hey, if you don't believe me, that's absolutely fine. But maybe you should give it a try sometime.

I don't know about you, but when I hear someone's voice on the phone, I do NOT have to wait for them to say more than a single word or so before I know which gender they sound like. Nowhere near enough time for my brain to have enough of them speaking to get a feel for inflection or word choices.

It just doesn't work like that.

It's akin to suggesting that a cat meow sounds like a dog barking if the cat meowed very quickly and suddenly like a dog does.


EDIT: Just take a text to speech voice simulator for example.

http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php (http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php)

There's no real inflection in either gender voices and you can pick whatever words to be said that you like.
Can you honestly say that you have absolutely ANY difficulty telling them apart?

I think we have to agree to disagree :)

Quote from: Virginia on April 05, 2010, 05:42:18 AM
I think we have to agree to disagree :)

Guess so, I still think you should give it a try sometime though.  :laugh:

Some good information from you two appearing in the thread if a little heated  :o

I am only doing a little a day for the moment i cant really allow my voice to get stuck in a higher pitch although i do majorly understand now how to control my voice box its pinning the resononace down right now that is going to take me a while to get that perfect without having to struggle at times.

Basic excercise i am doing for that is pushing my voice box up and trying to hold it there for as long as possible without speaking so it get used to the action of being higher up to restrict my throat and i get the right resononance so far its working i can keep my voice in my neck and a little bit of the chest but pushing any higher with pitch and i sound pinched and forced which isnt good.

In all ways though everything you have posted, the video's and other forum posts are all making more sense than they did to me a week or so ago and im making progress.

Im still worried my neighbours can hear me when im practicing but then again its not at stupid hours and im not doing it at silly times of the night so i dont really care.

Im giving myself a untill near end of the year to go see my doctor to start my journey or at least get to talk to a therapist as some other issues have now cropped up but learning to walk, talk, speak, gesture like a female is something i will need eventually and i want to be prepaired.

Guess i just like to be well planned out and ready for any bumps in the road that happen along especially when you have to take the NHS route.

My biggest thing though is want to finish my smoking cessation tablets, and get myself into an excercise routing i can handle and loose some weight, after reading information by people on this forum, and on google searchs some times if you have to much belly fat, HRT and other things can be rather picky and not influence the female fat distribution properly, i already have fatty thighs and a over fat pot belly and some of the usual manish boobs but i have had those since i was at school before i even put on more weight, its only over the last few years thinking about who am i, what do i want how do i deal with how do i feel am i normal and all those thoughts dancing about its in the last while i knew what i wanted to do.

I am also getting myself used to sleeping 8 hours a night as i have not slept that long in a very long time.

But i can say however doing what i am doing now, learning to walk, and speak in a female manner and changing my speech patterns, inflections, i feel at peace not massivly unhappy as i was before that is still there but at least i have a smile on my face because i am taking steps to become the real me.