I have a question re: the effects that the Yeson voice surgery do...
I understand it changes the pitch (frequency) of the voice, but I wouldn't think it changes the resonance.
Is the surgery do-it-and-you're-good-to-go? Or what kind of post op exercises does one have to do, and how much time is involved?
Thanks!
Of course the ones who did it can say more to it but as I understand it it mostly change pitch, especially the ease with which a higher pitch is reached, it can change some thing in the timbre because low frequencies will be missing, but regardless of having a VFS one has to do training. At least one has to do some resonance ans prosody training if one is not a natural - and one has to do regular voice recovery exercises (there are videos of that on Yesons website, I recognize the exercises as I had to do them when recovering from my voice issues). So I would say for most who had not much experience with voice, it is not really a quick fix surgery.
Ok so as a person who totally has 0 training, I will give my opinion.
Yes, the surgery mostly works on pitch, a little on timbre probably. Since the upper VTL has never changed, you'll still need to work on resonance - otherwise you might sound like Michael Maniaci (a male soprano talking in a super high pitch but male resonance :-\)
Anyways, you'll have some training to do, as lip-trills and vowels on scales in order to make your muscles adapt to the shorter vocal cords.
If you are too lazy or can never reach that feminine voice with voice training, I'd say that you might consider thyrohyoid elevation also... as this is probably something that changes the natural resonance? But I don't really see any good results.
I also had zero training prior to my surgery. I'm about five weeks post-op now and I can already tell the difference. I had to call up a company the other day and got referred to as a woman (a first for me) without them knowing my name. Dr. Kim informed me that after two months when I can start doing the vocal exercises they gave me that I should also get professional voice lessons to relearn how to talk with the new vocal folds. He also told me that it would probably take a year to reach the point of complete improvement. If you want to hear my recordings to date I have them posted in this forum under "Really scared." I hope this helps.
I think of course even a high pitched voice with a more male resonance would often be accepted as female. Ask guys who have such a voice about their phone experiences :P - so pitch alone is of course a strong gender marker, but to really be happy with your voice in all situations, of course the sound of the voice also has to fit and I guess this means working on resonance among others