Hi everyone. I've sort of found my female voice (with a few more tweaks and more consistency needed) but the one thing that is really hard to do is to laugh naturally while speaking in my female voice. If I just do a natural laugh, the bass part of my voice comes back and I laugh like I did as a boy. It's very embarrassing out in public, as I just went full time about a week ago. Laughing feels so good and is a really nice part of life, but this is just hindering it :( Thanks if you can help.
http://soundcloud.com/chobitsrabbit/laughelp/s-9ESRc (http://soundcloud.com/chobitsrabbit/laughelp/s-9ESRc) < This is the problem I'm talking about if you wouldn't mind listening.
I'd love to hear more about this as well, as I'm just starting to try and alter my voice (I started 2 days ago, so a loooong road to go).
You have an amazing voice btw. :)
You might want to aim for shifting your voice to falsetto when you laugh. It seems like my body naturally shifts my voice higher in order to facilitate laughing. That works especially well for heavy laughter, which if you think about it is really just screaming in short, random bursts. It also seems that the faster you expel the air from your lungs, the higher the sound you can produce.
This video features two men laughing, but they get pretty high pitched. Try to listen to the son's laugh just because the father tends to get a couple bass-riddled heaves in his laugh.
fridge scare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ga2GRgN-Fo#)
I wouldn't say mimic them exactly, but that's probably the effect you want to go for a big, all out laugh.
Having a little bass sound in your laugh is okay, though. In the video below, the woman on the right has a deeper voice, and her laughter is occasionally punctuated with deeper sounding "huhs" and such.
Contagious laughter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJlYXAuObD4&feature=related#)
This woman goes high and deep with her laughter:
best laugh attack ever! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc8ULRHyU_k&feature=related#)
So, I think you have to find balance between falsetto and chest voice, just like with speaking in a feminine voice. The issue with laughing is that you lose voluntary control over some of your muscles, so you have to consciously keep your voice box in the female voice position. It might help to practice laughing, as dumb as that may sound. Like, watch a video that always makes you laugh and just consciously prepare your voice for laughing. I think, like the voice, it's one of those things that just becomes natural after practice.
Hope that helps or maybe gives you something to try out!
I too am interested in finding out the answer to this.
Zelda - your voice is A. Mazing.
AbraCadebra - Thanks for being so sweet :) There's no need to be jealous! It is HARD to get that female voice! It just takes a little practice and you'll have your voice in no time.
Lilium - Thanks too. It's nice to know that you also want to hear the same answer. I'm not alone in this pursuit!
Caitlin - Thanks times three! It's nice that everyone wants to know about this too.
Bullwinkle - Wowyzowy you really gave me a bunch of good information and funny videos. When I'm laughing my head off at something truly funny, it does tend to come out as falsetto and sounds fairly feminine. It's hard to do the genuine little laughs at things. The thing that feels so good about laughing is the fact (like you said) that you're losing control of some of your muscles. Hopefully it doesn't mean that if you want to laugh in a female voice, that you have to totally control every little part of your voice. Here's hoping it becomes send nature. You definitely helped and gave me a lot to try out. Especially the tip of expelling air out of your lungs faster. Thanks so much!
Maybe for more subdued laughter that is not so bombastic (chuckles, giggles, snickers and such), the throat muscles are in the same sort of position as the for the big laughs, it's just a matter of air control. Sort of like singing. I think it might be good to research and practice different types of laughs (youtube is helpful for that), and maybe you can find a laughter style that sounds feminine. You can have different laughs for different levels of funny, so why not build up a repertoire?
BTW, you have a nice-sounding voice! I thought the first laugh you recorded would be suitable for a subtle-type laugh.
Some very pretty ladies get away with dorky laughs- Cameron Diaz comes to mind. Biting my bottom lip and playing up my smile with a sort a of subdued squeeled "hunh" works well for me.
Zelda, this is what worked for me:
I had to completely relearn my laugh. This is a very hard thing to do and it took me a few months to get where the laugh came naturally without me thinking about it.
We become used to our own laugh and it's almost like a unique signature to ourselves. But in order to change my laugh, I had to completely reinvent my laugh...just like I had to reinvent my voice through different pitches and resonances.
I had gotten my talking voice down and then I worked on my laugh as I was working on my talking voice. I also worked on my yelling voice too during this time.
Last month, I finally mastered the singing in Soprano without sounding like I was choking a cat to death.
But yeah, for me, I had to destroy down everything i learnt about my laughter and relearn it. Like reinventing the wheel.
Hi. I'm not mtf, but my voice is deep enough that I've spent a lifetime trying to learn to talk higher so I could "pass" as a girl (I was closeted). So I'd like to chime in.
I think the only thing that will help is practice. Find something funny to do at home, and spend some time being conscious of what you sound like. That's too hard to do in spontaneous public moments. If you practice enough, your body will do it on its own, and then you won't have to interrupt the mood by thinking about it.
Now that I'm trying to pass as male, I have no trouble with laughter, but when I get upset my voice gets too high. It is weird to be totally in your proper gender and then have those little throwbacks pop up. Good luck.
i think this could help. myself, i have a very soft female pitched voice, and i've had a good amount of my life where i was uncomfortable laughing. laughing was something i thought would make my voice sound more masculine, which i really didn't want, because i was pretty hypersensitive when it came to things like that. i don't laugh in haha sounds. i laugh in a "mhmmhmm" sound. i've been training myself to laugh actually. i haven't done it in such a long time, genuinely. my voice became very soft at one part of my life, so i feel pretty limited in range as well, since my voice can't reach a high volume too well. "hehehehuhu." is also sounds that are easy to sound feminine with.
who cares about laughing? ???
Quote from: fionabell on October 16, 2011, 09:10:29 PM
who cares about laughing? ???
I do. I laugh all the time and I enjoy it!
When I was in high school and college, I often laughed like a girl naturally. My friends made fun of me and I learned not to do it. But, like riding a bicycle, I never forgot. My laugh is more female than my speaking voice.
Laughter does not come from the speech center of the brain. While a speech-therapy approach to a female laugh might work for some, I recommend being female and laughing naturally. Let it happen.
I suppose when all else fails, you can just giggle instead. Not quite as satisfying as laughing but it gets the message across better than just sitting there ;)
@ Zeldaheart
I daont think your laugh is boyish at all. I think your laugh is girly,fine and cute just they way it is! Stop worrying about it. Your voice is great by the way.
You sound absolutely gorgeous!!!!!!!
I can pull off a somewhat feminine laugh if the humourus situation is not too funny and I can control myself.
However, if it is super funny, I just burst out in the most obviously male laugh ever.
Completely self defeteing.
::)
Quote from: ZeldaHeart on October 11, 2011, 03:51:38 AMHow do I laugh in my female voice?
Like this...HA HA HA HA!
I alternate between laughing in falsetto and a great big bellowing dirty laugh! It sounds a bit masculine but I don't care now - in fact one woman who I used to work with has almost the exact same laugh as me!
Well...at least your laugh doesn't sound like THIS - X - Factor - Crazy laugh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8DHsMZ7koc#)