I was just re-watching CandiFLA's YouTube videos on voice training and in doing so, i've learned something useful that I intend to put to good use:
The point of using falsetto is to get your brain accustomed to using only the upper registers when you speak, AND to strengthen the muscles necessary to gain control of the certain muscles necessary to speak in a convincing female voice, AND to take the resonance out of my neck.
And here is something else that I learned: I've learned that in practicing with falsetto, don't worry about getting the female sound. Only focusing on strengthening the muscles to GET the sounds. Right now, when i speak normally, my chest no longer vibrates; the lower part of my neck does. I still would rather now just focus on falsetto and gaining muscular control. When I practice falsetto and speaking at that high pitch, I feel my lips vibrating and its uncomfortable but that's what I need.
So what about the whole "slidding-down" method? When you speak in the Mickey Mouse voice and come down to your normal voice. Is that still necessary?
Well you dont want to sound like Mickey Mouse all the time, would you? So of course you have to come down again from the falsetto. ;)
Besides - I am not really sure if the point is to stregthen muscles, rather to play with various muscles you need to learn how to use them and what they do, mostly subconsciously. I think the point is not to stay in the falsetto for long, just for a few sentences and then slide down on the "other side" with the throat/head resonance still in place and the chest resonance still absent. If you slip to the old voice when coming down, I guess playing around in falsetto a bit makes sense.
I always tend to tighten my throat because I would have thought that doing so will make my vocal chords smaller and tighter and thus get me the female sound, and besides, that's what a few other trans girls on YouTube have been recommending. But as I do tighten my throat, and do the exercise, I tend to get really tired and run out of breath.
I think i said this before. Sigh. The goal is not to force it and squeeze your voice to death to make it gawddamit sound like a female voice. The feminine voice has to be "found" (by using these falsetto method or other methods) and then it has to be treated with lightness and softness and a lot of air coming ideally from abdominal breathing. It is supposed to be really "light" and not all tight and squeezing. If you do that, your voice will strain and be damaged and eventually you will have nodules and asymmetry and all that kind of stuff from speaking in a forced feminized voice.
Seriously, this is quite hard to explain in Text and some dont understand the videos either. I would strongly recommend you save up the maybe $300 or $500 for a couple of professional person-to-person voice training sessions. Ideally not in Skype or online, but really physicall go there. Even if you only manage to get 1 hour now and maybe one hour evers 2 or 3 months then - it may just guide you to at least not do damage while you try to find your voice.
The going tight to get the voice and trying to contort your vocal areas into a better shape for a feminine voice is not really ideal. Speaking is meant to be easy not strained. I think it is better to develop a voice by slowly pulling up than forcing up and pulling down.
Quote from: AnnaiyahStarr on March 11, 2015, 07:10:47 AM
I always tend to tighten my throat because I would have thought that doing so will make my vocal chords smaller and tighter and thus get me the female sound, and besides, that's what a few other trans girls on YouTube have been recommending. But as I do tighten my throat, and do the exercise, I tend to get really tired and run out of breath.
This is a perfect technique to destroy your voice. You can only safely develop a voice and safely use it, if you learn to use it in relaxed neutral position. Tightening and squeezing anything will only cause vocal cords problems, which could eventually cause such damage that you would be unable to have voice feminization surgery.
The voice you can safely use is only natural voice within your natural vocal range. You must learn to use that, without any strain or tightening, and without any raising of the Adam's apple. If your natural vocal range is too low to enable you to sound feminine while using it in relaxed, safe natural position.. you should start to think about surgery.
What few other trans girls on YouTube have been saying and recommending must always be taken with a LOT of reservation, as the chances anyone of them is a speech therapist are very small.
If you don't feel comfortable enough in your knowledge about voice development, you should look into getting help from a professional speech therapist. I don't mean this just for you.. Lessons might be expensive, but compared to price of permanently damaged voice, or repair surgery (and not being able to speak for months after), it might be worth to think about.
*Your adams apple will raise of course though when you are speaking at a higher pitch.
You're doing it wrong if it does. Keeping it in neutral position is essential. Practising in front of mirror, and touching it gently with finger, should help with unlearning the mistake.
Your larynx is meant to go up and down as you change pitch. Just not to the same extent as when you are for example swallowing or following some bad vocal advice.
It's obvious it moves a little up and down while talking.. but moving up because you change a pitch higher is not necessary, and is a problematic wrong doing which takes a lot of time to unlearn. I did this unlearning while training my singing voice years ago. It literally took a few years of unlearning the self-learned mistake before I was able to control it all the time. The whole point is keeping it in neutral relaxed position, and not instinctively letting it higher, as nothing good happens along with doing so, only straining of the voice.
As I understand it, the larynx (which is where, if you have one, an adams apple is located) is not supposed to move with pitch at all. But moving it up a little (not cramming it with force into your head!) can change the resonance. As can softly tightening the muscles in the area above the larynx a bit to make the resonance chamber upwards of the larynx smaller ans whorte. This is what causes a more feminine resonance - in addition to some techniques regarding node, tongue and so on. None of that should be done with force and it never should feel like squeezing. Dr Thomas who does voice surgery in Portland even moves the Larynx in a bit higher position to achieve that result in addition to the pitch increase. A pitch increase alone will not make a voice feminine, after all.
But again, there are safe methods to do this and others that work for a while and then fail - and then you can get nodules on the vocal chords, or tremor of the vocal muscles , or spasmodic dysphonie, or a hyperactive voice - all of which is not good, needs speech therapy and sometimes surgery and Botox to cure. Then you are better off doing voice surgery right from the start ;)
Think of it this way - Force, fight, power, strength are male principles, softness, elegance, care and carefullness, lightness are feminine principles. Depending on what you use to make your voice, so it will end up sounding ;)