I can't afford a voice coach so I'm trying to do it on my own. I need some sort of resource to work with. The trouble is I find Finding Your Female Voice really boring and annoying. Is there anything else out there for me?
there is no free lunch with voice.
fyfv is boring, but it is very accurate. Please do not underestimate it.
Voice is like violin, a bit more complex, and violin is one of the hardest instruments to play.
It will take months of constant practice to have a decent female voice, there are no
shortcomings, unless you block puberty and stop the thickening of the vocal chords.
Once settled, the male chords must be re-trained.
http://www.looking-glass.greenend.org.uk/voice.htm (http://www.looking-glass.greenend.org.uk/voice.htm)
That one was recommended to me by another board member here and is a quite good start.
If you have a google/iPhone then there is also the EVA apps from Kathy Perez as well.
I'll write up some tips that I learned from the seminars that I attended while at Southern Comfort later tonight as well. I'd like to learn and share with everyone else so that I can improve as well.
Voice training is easy, as long as you can allow yourself to be a bit of a dick and talk to yourself and make silly noises :) there's a thread on this forum for people to upload clips of themselves to get pointers and feedback.
From my notes:
Voice-
Open your mouth and work on omisure
Sub tones- work on frequency by using vocal scales and learn to use them in a sentence
Females speak by starting conversations with friends in a falsetto
They also start stories with a falsetto to settle scene and then move to a lower sub tone to convey the body of the story.
Giggles are a falsetto
Use the smile to alter the throat.
Lift the hard palette and Adam's apple to raise the tone/ pitch
Breath from the stomach and sit up straight with good posture.
Convey more with tone change than with volume. Use body language as a tool to change your sub tones.
Those were from the seminars with Kathryn Blanchard and Kathy Perez. And I agree that it is practice practice practice. But don't over stress your voice. It's better to do 15-30min a day than several hours in a single day until your voice gains strength and can maintain the sound that you want more naturally.
For about a year I've been able to do a perfect female voice - sometimes. It doesn't always come out as well as I'd like (though I can always pass if I feel it's important to pass), and I also can't maintain it; my voice gets hoarse. So I need to do some "real" voice training, or so I think.
From my observations and experience when someone makes a commitment to transition these things fall into place on their own because there comes a time where one realizes it has to work for you to fit into the world.
As someone that has yet to begin transition I seriously doubt that any sort of voice training would make any difference. Think of it this way. That person has not invested any effort into the process. They mentally are still the guy the safe thing. Their mind is not committed to what it is they are thinking about doing.
Big differences here people.
Quote from: Katie on October 02, 2013, 07:36:36 AM
From my observations and experience when some makes a commitment to transition these things fall into place on their own because there comes a time where one realizes it has to work for you to fit into the world.
As someone that has yet to begin transition I seriously doubt that any sort of voice training would make any difference. Think of it this way. That person has not invested any effort into the process. They mentally are still the guy the safe thing. Their mind is not committed to what it is they are thinking about doing.
Big differences here people.
Hey Katie,
Take it from someone who has started transitioning (albeit slowly and cautiously) voice training takes a lot of time and effort. If you could practice beforehand, you will make it much easier for yourself. Looks are important, but so is our voice. I've seen very passable women that have been outed by their voice. If they had only worked harder on that, no one would guess. It's a very critical part of transitioning that doesn't get the attention it deserves. Make it an early priority because it will take hard work (I'm learning this the hard way).
Quote from: Sophia Gubb on October 01, 2013, 07:34:29 AM
I can't afford a voice coach so I'm trying to do it on my own. I need some sort of resource to work with. The trouble is I find Finding Your Female Voice really boring and annoying. Is there anything else out there for me?
Practicing in the car is easier because you have something going on and no one can hear you. That's what I'm doing. It's never going to be fun per say, but at least you can mitigate the tedious nature of it.
another good way of training is toll-free numbers...
you call and try to speak as a lady... if you are ma'am-ed you pass.
Ayeyayaya...
First tip: sing. Sing a lot. Sing all the time to songs by women in mid ranges. If you've gone through puberty, Karen O or Mariah Carey are out of the question but there are plenty of artists that sing in the Alto or High Tenor ranges that you'll be able to sing along with just fine. Before you sing, do those vowel warmups that FYFV has you do. They're really good for limbering up the vocal cords which can get pretty stiff without a good deal of usage. After the warmups, do some scales. If you don't know how, check YouTube.
Second tip: Record/Play Back. Every vocal coach worth their salt will tell you to listen to yourself. Screw the rest of the world for a while. You just do you. Both Andriod and iOS have recorder apps, some free, some not. Pick a tongue twister or a nursery rhyme or maybe an actor's warmup (I use Chippy Chopper, personally), and say it once. Listen to it and really hear the specific parts that aren't really 'good' to your ear and make sure that you pick them up next time. Wash, rinse, repeat. After a while, you may find that your exercise won't provide enough challenge. At this point, pick a book with a good story that you know the flow of and practice reading it into the recorder. Really try to capture the essence of the scene with your tone. Play it back, do the thing where you note the bad parts, etc.
Third: PRATT. I suppose that I might put together a tutorial at some point on this but PRATT (http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/) is a super powerful vocal analyzer which can isolate frequency, formant, impulse, and a number of other vocal queues. If you know what you're doing with it, you can really dial in your voice. (Just checked at mine is actually at the upper end of the frequency spectrum and the middle range of female formant, so WOO!)
Fourth: Talk to yourself in the mirror. It's funny but a lot of people miss this one. Talking to yourself in the mirror will show you what the rest of the world sees when you're talking. I know some girls who have awesome voices but crap body language. 'S not so good. You really want to be able to express what you're feeling through your body language and this, as was mentioned before, will alter the pitch and tonal quality of your voice, and yes, smiling will reduce the tonal cavity in your mouth and so will reduce some resonance... but not like you'd think all the time.
Fifth: Give it time. I had a head start going into this and it still took a little while to get all the pieces of my voice really dialed in. Most people don't play with vocal sound effects or accents on a regular basis, nor do they do a lot of acting. If you did, awesome, you're probably 1/2 way there. If not, you've got some work to do and looking for a shortcut will give you shortcut-like results (half-baked, to say it nicely). Put in the time, put in the effort and you'll be rewarded by never getting sir'd on the phone again ('s been three or so years since I've heard that. pretty awesome, really.)
FYFV is a fine training program and covers all the bases quite well. A lot of the methods that are used to tune your voice are the same ones that are used in theatre so, Andrea actually has a good grasp of the topic through years and years of practice. If you follow it and, maybe play around with some of these tips, you'll actually go pretty far, pretty fast so, get to it and stop thinking about how to short-cut the process. One thing that no one tells you is that it never really ends. We're taking vocal ranges and really stressing them to the brink so it takes constant fiddling over the years to keep the things in check. :-P
P.S. - Water. Drink lots and lots of water. If you smoke, cut that out asap for optimal results. Tea and chamomile also help.
I totally could use a tutorial for PRAAT :) - The only thing I use right now is the average pitch detector (and of course the playback function). I understand zip when I look at the forments and such - No idea what to look at to see if the voice is in a female range or not. So I would really love to see a tutorial on that :)
Quote from: anjaq on October 02, 2013, 04:44:34 PM
I totally could use a tutorial for PRAAT :) - The only thing I use right now is the average pitch detector (and of course the playback function). I understand zip when I look at the forments and such - No idea what to look at to see if the voice is in a female range or not. So I would really love to see a tutorial on that :)
I'll look into doing it during some of my <sarcasm>copious amounts of spare time</sarcasm>.
Really, I've been thinking about doing something like it for a while but it's a lot of work to put instructions on how to make a really advanced scienc-y program accessible for most people.
Oh that would be great, really! I bet it will be a most frequently accessed document from people here who try to get their voice right...
Quote from: Isabelle on October 01, 2013, 05:23:42 PM
Voice training is easy, as long as you can allow yourself to be a bit of a dick and talk to yourself and make silly noises :)
Haha! I'm always making silly noises... and voices. In fact I have been making different voices for so long it might be a hinderance! I have to break some old habits or else I sound like Elmo. But yeah, if you aren't used to doing different sounds with your voice, then you have to train it to do that. And that takes a while.
I'm using Finding Your Female Voice. I was impressed with her videos. I just started so I can't comment on it yet, but I do understand the seeming tedium of making funny noises, and I find the exercises useful, and kind of fun. It's just like practicing scales on a guitar. You aren't going to use them in actual music, but they train your muscles. So you do them over, and over, and over, until it's second nature.
Now the hard part is going to be singing. That puts me in the position of either not using half of my range, while hoping it gets higher (and it's pretty high already), and the alternative being vocal surgery, which will leave me with learning how to sing all over again... Such a conundrum.
Quote from: anjaq on October 02, 2013, 04:44:34 PM
I totally could use a tutorial for PRAAT :) - The only thing I use right now is the average pitch detector (and of course the playback function). I understand zip when I look at the forments and such - No idea what to look at to see if the voice is in a female range or not. So I would really love to see a tutorial on that :)
Do you get it to work in real time? When I use it it basically doesn't do anything. I can get it to record or play back but I don't see anything while it's playing. >:(
Quote from: RavenMoon on October 04, 2013, 02:21:56 AM
Do you get it to work in real time? When I use it it basically doesn't do anything. I can get it to record or play back but I don't see anything while it's playing. >:(
I dont think it has any realtime features. You can record, view and then analyze (and playback) I think.
Voice training is certainly difficult!! I've been working on mine for about 10 months so far. Now it's getting fairly consistent, and can pass for female according to my voice coach. Although I'm far more critical of my voice than my voice coach is. Also, I don't sound anywhere near as girly as you Victoria :). Just genetics at play I think... My mother and one sister both have somewhat mature hoarsey-coarsey voices that I seem to have too. I suspect that I'll end up sounding pretty close to my mum / sister.
Still much fine tuning to do, and still more to learn with speech patterns and flow, but I will get there. It improves every time I get to use my real voice for real conversation.
In terms of tools, I make use of a simple little Android app called AudioSpectrumMonitor for this...
It shows a real-time spectrogram of any sound coming through the microphone. I found it handy because it identifies the base pitch ( in Hz and note ) as well as showing mid tones etc. Nowhere near as complex or powerful as Praat, but it can be used anywhere and can show pitch and basic shape of your voice. :).
Quote from: anjaq on October 04, 2013, 02:46:02 AM
I dont think it has any realtime features. You can record, view and then analyze (and playback) I think.
Ok thanks! Admittedly I haven't played with it much or read any of the documentation.
My voice just "clicked" one day. No practice, no training. It just clicked. I found a simple trick that worked on the first day I started practicing. It's wasn't perfect but it passed. I've been using it non stop since I worked it out. It hurt a little at the start but, I quickly got used to it.
All I did was lay on my bed, extend my neck (like looking up) and swallowed. This (for whatever reason) causes the voice box to be in a position that cuts chest resonance, all you need to do is raise your pitch a tiny bit and you're good to go.
There's actually an old sample in the "does my voice pass thread" recorded on the day I worked out the trick. It's not perfect but it's done the job ever since (if you're interested in hearing my first day result :p )
(Of course you need to practice diction, vocabulary, articulation and pitch variation but, that will actually just come naturally as you learn to communicate with other women. It's like moving to a new country and having to learn their accent to make yourself understood)
where r you from am in UK Scotland and started voice training last year on the NHS if u r in the UK talk to your clink and ask them to referral you if not look on you tube there some good tips on there for self training
Quote from: RavenMoon on October 04, 2013, 03:05:25 AM
Ok thanks! Admittedly I haven't played with it much or read any of the documentation.
In the playback screen, you have to zoom in to less than 10 seconds to see any analysis. The blue line is the frequency and the average frequency is located in the right. You're shooting for >180hz. Formants are a trickier thing to explain though.
I posted a sample in the 'not going to wake up and be a girl' thread of my normal speaking voice. I tend to be around 212hz when I check it.
Quote from: Isabelle on October 01, 2013, 05:23:42 PM
Voice training is easy, as long as you can allow yourself to be a bit of a dick and talk to yourself and make silly noises :) there's a thread on this forum for people to upload clips of themselves to get pointers and feedback.
I've just started being OK with talking to myself. I feel much less stupid about it after a while... I just hope it doesn't become a habit in "real" life (outside the car, shower, etc).
I still can't get over the microphone, though... I think I need to turn it on and forget it's there. I did splurge a few weeks ago and got a Blue Snowball... most I've been able to do is some ukulele and singing, though.
Yes that "moving the voicebox up" trick is more of less the goal of many of the fast track tutorials I have seen, back when I needed it the only one I found was Melanie Ann Philipps descriptions. I did that as well and it worked for me rather ok for a while, I still do that, it has become rahter normal for me although I slip sometimes when surprised. I think it is not enough though, at least for me. I still have a low pitch and that gets me in trouble. In the beginning Imanaged to raise pitch a bit and that was good for a while but I guess mostly the pitch but maybe also the voice box thing lead me to get long term trouble with my voice. It was getting rough and eventually I could not keep the pitch. I read in an article by a voice surgeon that almost all of his patients who had been post of 10+ years had some nodules or whatever on their vocal cords that made them sound less than optimal. Can be cured it seems by not raising pitch too much and by some other training.
Another thing that is lacking when using only that trick is obviously to get a proper alternative resonance and loudness/projection. I still have that problem now as I never learned it another way and I was just always the one with the weaker voice. Its not that much of an issue as there are plenty of women who also tend to speak very low volume, so it does not come over as unusual I think, but its better to fix that, I suppose.
Still would like to know how to use the other features in praat except the pitch. I noticed that if I make the same pitched sound with or without chest resonance, I get very different readings in praat. Just adding chest resonance drops the Hz number by like 40 or 60 Hz it seems. The added low frequencies from that resonance are probably entering the calculation. So I am not sure how reliable that pitch detection is...