I'm a bit frustrated with this. Most people agree that hormones have little to no effect on any MTF voice and support that claim by saying that your vocal cords are now that of a male's and hormones do not change that. So what's actually changing inside when someone practices their female voice? From what I have been able to gather from reading, everyone just practices their voice till it somehow becomes feminine in a few months. I usually just strain my voice trying because it will not go high enough. I'm considering surgery just to avoid any further straining and frustration with this.

I have been practicing just for a couple of days, so I don't see any effects and I don't expect any significant physiological changes. Now I can take a couple of notes after C4 which I was not able to sing before, so I guess my vocal cords are getting better, but it will not shift my voice higher just on it is own, I have to really concentrate on that. I guess what people actually train, is making this shift effortless and unconscious. And I don't strain myself, I stop my practice when I feel my throat becomes sore, because after that my voice only goes down, not up.

I know HRT can't change your voice, but sometimes I can be sure that my voice is somehow different...just a bit different, not a big deal, but a tiny bit more feminine...could I be modulating my voice without noticing it?

But I think that training is the key. When you are used to modulating your voice you can shift easily from masculine to feminine. I can't do that yet, but I've been trying.

You need to be careful that you don't strain your vocal cords by forcing the pitch too high. If you aim for a lighter voice you'll have a more natural sound. Are you using YouTube or CDs to practice from? An actual speech therapist is the best bet but not always possible.

I have been working on my voice a little everyday for about 3 months. It is like I am going nowhere with this, it is very frustrating. Sometimes during the day I am able to hit a higher pitch but that is usually by mid day and usually only last for a few hours. The morning is the worst time, I sound like a Marine drill instructor... crap!

I suppose I could just keep my mouth shut all morning. My resonance and inflexion are doing better but I just can't maintain a feminine pitch.

I wish there was a speech therapist in my area

Gene, through practice, I am now so comfortable using my female voice, that I use it all the time without conscious thought. Even when I'm upset or agitated and have something to say, it comes out feminine because my brain has rewired itself to talk that way all the time.

I'll be working on paperwork to start speech therapy in Iowa City in January, and while its expensive I'm sure I'll make better progress than I have the last few months.

The fact you have to work really hard to get to the point of having a good voice IMHO is the biggest pain of the entire process. I really wish that meds did something for this...

I found that humming lightly and quietly throughout the day keeps my vocal cords nice and limber, otherwise they can get strained if I try speaking too long in my female voice. I wouldn't say I have a very deep voice but it does have a male timbre, not much I can do about that but a lot of women do have deep voices (for a woman) and I make a special effort to listen to how they talk and aim for that. Better to sound like Marlene Dietrich than Minnie Mouse I always say!

Been practicing every day, some days for an hour other for 10-15 mins for about two years now. When i first started I gave up and picked it up months later. It does take a lot of practice. Even now when I can go into my female voice with a snap. I am still not 100% happy with it and some days it takes time for me to warm it up.

No physiological changes so far at least I don't know of any....

Strangely for me it did work rather well without too much practice with the method that several people use in online tutorials. Melanie Anne Phillips, CandiFla and others. The focus in these methods is on resonance and not pitch. Physiologically what seems to happen is that the voicebox moves a bit to shorten the vocal tract. This can become quite a permanent habit for many. This also changes pitch a bit but more as a byproduct. They key is to not to focus at all on pitch first. I admit however that I did it not right because in the end my voice did strain, probably mostly from the added pitch change later on. For this I consider VFS now. But VFS will not make a low pitch male voice into a high pitch female voice, it will make a low pitch female-ish voice into a high pitch female voice, so there are changes to be done anyways and that is mostly about resonance, inflection, timbre and other qualities - dont focus on pitch.

Is it possible that some people just can't do this? I have a deep voice, like.. my lower range is veeery low, and my normal speaking voice is in the mid-high range for what sounds I can produce, and it's still deep. So my upper limit is still below the female range. Above that, if I can manage some higher pitches, it's spotty. Going up the scale I start hitting pitches that I can't produce, which is where it starts getting into the female range. Only the sound of my breath can be heard. I've been trying this a lot, and for a while, and I used to sing a lot so I've had plenty of warm-ups before, but if anything I feel like my voice is only getting worse. I just feel like I'm physically incapable of speaking in the female range. Am I just going to have to rely on voice surgery?

Ashey, I think everyone is capable of reaching the high pitch part - the female range is not that high after all. The hard part is to speak in that range constantly. The male speaking range is 100-150 Hz, female is 170-230 Hz but thats just averages. When singing just tones, no words, it should be easy to go up in pitch in the 300s and more. Ther eis a break point where it goes from as my therapist said "mass voice to stretched voice" - it usually is in the 300s I think. Doing lip flutter exercises (warm ups) and push pitch up during that does help with getting rid of the break. I can now manage after some training to go from 130 Hz up in the 700s without breaking. But thats not needed - 180 is all right already for speaking.
But really dont focus on pitch first, focus on resonance first, in case you did not get that already. Did you ever record and measure your frequencies? What is your average speaking frequency and how high can you go with that and how high can you go just making a tone and no words? (You can use either praat or "spectrogram" to check that)

Quote from: Ashey on December 14, 2013, 03:03:39 PM
Is it possible that some people just can't do this? I have a deep voice, like.. my lower range is veeery low, and my normal speaking voice is in the mid-high range for what sounds I can produce, and it's still deep. So my upper limit is still below the female range. Above that, if I can manage some higher pitches, it's spotty. Going up the scale I start hitting pitches that I can't produce, which is where it starts getting into the female range. Only the sound of my breath can be heard. I've been trying this a lot, and for a while, and I used to sing a lot so I've had plenty of warm-ups before, but if anything I feel like my voice is only getting worse. I just feel like I'm physically incapable of speaking in the female range. Am I just going to have to rely on voice surgery?

Sound's like you're in my position and I suppose there's a good chance that you will have to rely on VFS. I'm going to attempt some voice therapy before I do it but right now it feels so far off. I keep straining my voice just trying to talk. The other day I watched a video on youtube where a guy that looks like Joe Anybody shows you the dynamics of it. The key apparently is how high you can get your Adam's apple to go up. His was so high that it was practically hidden behind his jawbone and he sounded perfect. He said that it has to mimic the position that it goes into when you swallow. I can't find the video but it actually worked for me when I physically held it there. I can't find the video though, I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to find it.

Quote from: anjaq on December 14, 2013, 04:37:13 PM
Ashey, I think everyone is capable of reaching the high pitch part - the female range is not that high after all. The hard part is to speak in that range constantly. The male speaking range is 100-150 Hz, female is 170-230 Hz but thats just averages. When singing just tones, no words, it should be easy to go up in pitch in the 300s and more. Ther eis a break point where it goes from as my therapist said "mass voice to stretched voice" - it usually is in the 300s I think. Doing lip flutter exercises (warm ups) and push pitch up during that does help with getting rid of the break. I can now manage after some training to go from 130 Hz up in the 700s without breaking. But thats not needed - 180 is all right already for speaking.
But really dont focus on pitch first, focus on resonance first, in case you did not get that already. Did you ever record and measure your frequencies? What is your average speaking frequency and how high can you go with that and how high can you go just making a tone and no words? (You can use either praat or "spectrogram" to check that)

I just downloaded Pratt. That's a neat program. It looks like my average conversation voice is about 135-140 Hz and it peaks as high as 160 Hz.

Quote from: Ashey on December 14, 2013, 03:03:39 PM
Is it possible that some people just can't do this? I have a deep voice, like.. my lower range is veeery low, and my normal speaking voice is in the mid-high range for what sounds I can produce, and it's still deep. So my upper limit is still below the female range. Above that, if I can manage some higher pitches, it's spotty. Going up the scale I start hitting pitches that I can't produce, which is where it starts getting into the female range. Only the sound of my breath can be heard. I've been trying this a lot, and for a while, and I used to sing a lot so I've had plenty of warm-ups before, but if anything I feel like my voice is only getting worse. I just feel like I'm physically incapable of speaking in the female range. Am I just going to have to rely on voice surgery?

I think it is like anything with practice your get better. Also I do think some people just have a natural talent as doing these sort of things. I still don't like my voice, but I've been told several times it sounds pretty good.

Just keep practicing and trying different tips.

140 Hz is not the worst if that is your conversational pitch. If your high is at 160, if this is short peaks then this points to me towards some benefit being in allowing yourself more pitch variation (speaking "melody"). Average male range is 100-150 I read, so 140 is on the upper part of that if that is without you trying to increase pitch. From there it is quite possible to go up to 160, which is androgynous to 180 which is female.
The video with the adams apple - i saw that and it is partly correct - to improve resonance (! - not pitch) the larynx has to move up a bit. This takes some practice and there are a half dozen different ways to get into that. I heard Amy describe it as a more deliberate relaxation, others do it by looking at the adams apple, others do that falsetto trick. But to get resonance right is really the more important thing.
If you do not get the sound of the voice to be female even if the pitch is off, increasing pitch will not help much - not even if it is surgically altered.

I am not sure if this works but it should and I am going to try this - I believe in some software like Audacity, there are "filters" to increase pitch. Maybe this can help judging your voice a bit - you could record a clip and filter it to increase pitch to 200 Hz and then see if it sounds female overall. If it does, only the pitch is what is missing. If it still sounds a bit "fake" or like a high pitched male-ish voice, then most VFS would not help to get that away either.

If resonance is right, pitch will for some reason go up a bit anyways - not a whole lot, but a bit.

If there is no way you can get resonance working, the only VFS that can help is the "big one" like Dr Thomas does it - reducing larynx size and elevating its position with sutures.

Weird... So I tried a simple frequency  analyzer, and to me 200hz seemed too low. And I start breaking around 450-500hz. Either it's not accurate or my own sense of pitch is off lol. I tried recording something around 200-250 and I guess maybe it could be passable... I just seem to be a horrible judge of my own voice. >_< I DO need to work on getting the creakiness out though, and trying to find the upper and lower limits of the range I'm aiming for. :/

200 is perfect, maybe even a bit high if you are straining your voice to get there. We usually are horrible judges of ouor own voices. Thus always record and playback to get a good picture. Analyzers help. I found praat and spectrogram to be useful and accurate.
That said - while I know these things that I said theoretically, I myself messed it up. So make sure you get a proper training video or 1:1 voice trainer lessons and don't fool around endlessly by yourself. The basic principles - focussing on resonance, then on pitch secondary - the things about the break and all that - its correct, but there are obvioulsy wrong ways to achieve the changes and I did that and now I am having issues, so I should have taken proper voice lessons and not DIY on this one.