This is my first post on this board and I haven't been lurking for more that a few day so if get out of line let me know and be brutal about it as I have a thick skin. My surgery date was 1982 and I went through a good deal of speech therapy because I had a very low voice. My current voice falls apart around E3(female should be C4) and I have to work a bit below that for inflection. This puts me between the male and female range and combined with my 5 foot 14 inch hight has resulted in some looks over the years and thus the thick skin. A new neighbor, the fact I have only been in the city 4 years combined with a close death 2 years ago has finally motivated me to get out of my comfort zone and look into what's new in the voice world. While I knew about this surgery, my brain has been on overload for 3 days taking in the surgery, youtube and even some of the useful tools out there for my iPhone. I have been pitching my voice all these years because for a long time nothing else was available. I have no desire to dredge up the old voice and I last used in it 1979 so it's natural for me to alway fall into the somewhat higher voice. I came to this thread because Dr. Haben looks to be my best bet if the other non-surgical options don't pan out. I would be flying out of Phoenix but Portland scares me and the lack of information on Korea makes me nervous. Every surgery I had turned out great(for the time) and I don't want to risk making a mistake now.

Now to get on topic. Eva, I heard the voices that were still available and when you put the effort in, I could never tell you were ever anything other than a woman. Now here is were I might step out of line. The big problem is that you feel the old male urge to fill the empty space with sound. Yes, I used to do it to. You say aaaahhhhhh, uuuummmm and you stretch words out to fill the void. Female speech is alway moving around from frequency to frequency and never stopping for more than a fraction of a second. The way I broke this habit was to keep my mouth shut until I had assemble a full sentence in my head before starting to speak. If I had a laps of thought I would stop and not fill in the void.
As for revision surgery, if my voice was like that, I would be happy to continue pitch my voice into the upper range. In addition, I think most GG's do that already. Many women have lower voice than their normal speaking range and do exactly what we do, just not as far. I suspect it has something to do with the fact their voice never broke so they didn't learn how to use the lower register.

As always, revision surgery will be your decision but in any case, you really need some speech therapy to make the beautiful voice of yours shine. I am still in the process of gathering some tools to do self administrated speech therapy and the package could be had for under $150. From what I understand about the voice surgery, it takes care of 50% of the problem and solves the pitch issues. The other 50% is learning how to use the new voice and break years of old habits. That could be the hardest part of the whole process. I fully understand that if I have the surgery, I will need to put in months of work making the new voice as comfortable as my current one.

Time to put this rambling post up where somebody can see it and with my current record of defending gender reassignment on another site resulting in deleted posts, it will be interesting to see if this one sticks. I take a real beating over there but I am a glutton for punishment for a worthwhile cause.

Hi Everything. Welcome to Susan's. I look forward to seeing you around the site. Good luck and Hugs
Mariah

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Quote from: Dena on May 24, 2015, 10:18:17 PM
This is my first post on this board and I haven't been lurking for more that a few day so if get out of line let me know and be brutal about it as I have a thick skin. My surgery date was 1982 and I went through a good deal of speech therapy because I had a very low voice. My current voice falls apart around E3(female should be C4) and I have to work a bit below that for inflection. This puts me between the male and female range and combined with my 5 foot 14 inch hight has resulted in some looks over the years and thus the thick skin. A new neighbor, the fact I have only been in the city 4 years combined with a close death 2 years ago has finally motivated me to get out of my comfort zone and look into what's new in the voice world. While I knew about this surgery, my brain has been on overload for 3 days taking in the surgery, youtube and even some of the useful tools out there for my iPhone. I have been pitching my voice all these years because for a long time nothing else was available. I have no desire to dredge up the old voice and I last used in it 1979 so it's natural for me to alway fall into the somewhat higher voice. I came to this thread because Dr. Haben looks to be my best bet if the other non-surgical options don't pan out. I would be flying out of Phoenix but Portland scares me and the lack of information on Korea makes me nervous. Every surgery I had turned out great(for the time) and I don't want to risk making a mistake now.

Now to get on topic. Eva, I heard the voices that were still available and when you put the effort in, I could never tell you were ever anything other than a woman. Now here is were I might step out of line. The big problem is that you feel the old male urge to fill the empty space with sound. Yes, I used to do it to. You say aaaahhhhhh, uuuummmm and you stretch words out to fill the void. Female speech is alway moving around from frequency to frequency and never stopping for more than a fraction of a second. The way I broke this habit was to keep my mouth shut until I had assemble a full sentence in my head before starting to speak. If I had a laps of thought I would stop and not fill in the void.
As for revision surgery, if my voice was like that, I would be happy to continue pitch my voice into the upper range. In addition, I think most GG's do that already. Many women have lower voice than their normal speaking range and do exactly what we do, just not as far. I suspect it has something to do with the fact their voice never broke so they didn't learn how to use the lower register.

As always, revision surgery will be your decision but in any case, you really need some speech therapy to make the beautiful voice of yours shine. I am still in the process of gathering some tools to do self administrated speech therapy and the package could be had for under $150. From what I understand about the voice surgery, it takes care of 50% of the problem and solves the pitch issues. The other 50% is learning how to use the new voice and break years of old habits. That could be the hardest part of the whole process. I fully understand that if I have the surgery, I will need to put in months of work making the new voice as comfortable as my current one.

Time to put this rambling post up where somebody can see it and with my current record of defending gender reassignment on another site resulting in deleted posts, it will be interesting to see if this one sticks. I take a real beating over there but I am a glutton for punishment for a worthwhile cause.

Hi Dena Thanks, I just quoted you so your post will stick as long as mine is here, welcome   

I don't make it to this section much anymore because Ive just decided to not worry about my voice anymore and get on with life Im still not really happy with it but it also isn't really a problem for me either... My problem is I tend to try to compare myself to the prettiest cis women which is just not realistic or helpful... 100K + in surgery and suffering will never turn me into a 28 year old beauty  (But Im gonna do it all anyway) What does help however is to compare myself to myself when evaluating my progress and in that regard Im very happy at least   Im sure not getting any younger (46) and obsessing over myself is sure getting exhausting... Ive decided to try turning my focus outward now and worrying less about the body and more about everything else... Making changes for the better with my home, finances, and even my job 

No I understand exactly what you mean, I have very thick skin as well (goes with the territory), and you are correct that VFS will only correct about 50% of the problem... I can tell you it has really helped me a lot but there are still times I get sir'ed on the phone if Im not careful That said I doubt very much it has as much to do with pitch though mine could be higher as using the old male speech pattern.... Its like I can even tell when Im doing that these days and at least more and more a feminine voice is becoming my "normal" effortless voice anyway... Im sure speech therapy would no doubt help but there is none to be had here and honestly I don't feel like it, there are just so many other things to do

I haven't updated this thread in a while with a voice recording and I wont right now because I have seasonal allergies really messing with me right now  

All that said Dr Haben is a great guy and Im very thankful that this surgery is even possible... He does all of us a great service, he's very competent, honest and compassionate and even reasonably priced As much as I might complain about my voice I definitely have ZERO regrets and it was worth every penny

Quote from: Dena on May 24, 2015, 10:18:17 PM
The big problem is that you feel the old male urge to fill the empty space with sound. Yes, I used to do it to. You say aaaahhhhhh, uuuummmm and you stretch words out to fill the void. Female speech is alway moving around from frequency to frequency and never stopping for more than a fraction of a second. The way I broke this habit was to keep my mouth shut until I had assemble a full sentence in my head before starting to speak. If I had a laps of thought I would stop and not fill in the void.

This is good advice. I still have that problem and did not even notice I do this or that it is considered male until a friend pointed it out to me a while ago. i try to work on that now as well.

QuoteTime to put this rambling post up where somebody can see it and with my current record of defending gender reassignment on another site resulting in deleted posts, it will be interesting to see if this one sticks. I take a real beating over there but I am a glutton for punishment for a worthwhile cause.

I dont really understand - they deleted posts of you because you were in favour of "gender reassignment"? Was that because you defended the genital surgery as such or because you called it gender reassignmet surgery and not one of the newer, more "politically correct" terms?

Ah screw it, here's an old recording from last October from before my surgery, I can say I at least CANT go back as deep as it used to be  I dont feel like Ive gained much if any increase in pitch but I do feel like it sounds a lot more natural and a lot less forced now... Most of the time I just don't even think about it or worry about it anymore... It is what it is

This recording will self destruct in a week or two but it's my old voice

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0mZ0X6EKcId

These damn allergies from all the pollen get to me every spring  6 1/2 months post op...

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0zRauO3Cx1G

Delete post -  I was on a conservative web site as I am a conservative but it shocks me a little bit. First we see how much the liberals rant in this country and I had hoped we conservatives would behave better. Wrong. Conservatives rant just as bad and the only difference is the subject. It anybody and adult anymore. Well I suspect there are many more on this web site than in the rest of the country.

What happened is the subject got around to young children and I explained how hormone blockers allow more time for the child to make up their mind and reduce the impact of puberty should they decide to switch roles. I got in just after the entry was flagged and I was accused of being a child abuser and a sexual deviant. Well maybe I might be considered a deviant in some circles but not for sexual reasons and I would never do anything to hurt a child. My post vanished and I suspect it was a moderator who didn't understand the issue and made the whole thing go away. To their credit, most of my post did stick even though many showed their displeasure for what I was saying.

I fully expected to get bloody and bruised on that web site because so few people still understand the whole TS issue. I went there to at least shine some light on the misconceptions. Because it's public knowledge who runs the entire operation and he has a public email and he claims to be an explore of knowledge, I wrote a polite pointed email and invited him or his staff to contact me about the issue. It's been a couple of weeks and I am still wait. Not that I really expected anything but it's my nature to try. After all, the worst thing that could happen is nothing.

Funny thing is I estimate there are around half a dozen TS or post running around on that site. When I post there I remain under cover because some of the people who work around me might be on that site and I have so many others to use as examples, it's better to be an expert than an example in this case. It keeps the argument on topic instead of personal attack.  One XXXY and a MTF went public but my vote count being so low does funny things and it would take about that number to do what I see. It would be interesting to know how many on this site also play around in those sites.

Eva I am going to do it again. I hope you don't use the language in your speaking voice that you use in your postings. If I ever used cuss words around my parents I would have have been corrected right now. When my roommate transitioned I had to clean up her language as she worked on the flight line for TWA. I didn't out her because she passed away 2 years ago and she changed on the job so everybody in the airline knew. I find other ways to get the message across such as saying "dirty word" and leave it up to the other person to fill in the blank. Cussing like a sailor draws attention to examine you more closely. With a GG they find a foul mouthed woman. We will never be perfect so we want to draw as little attention to our flaws as possible and let them take our beauty in instead and that last voice sample was beautiful.

It's really funny how little flaws in what we say or how we say it can be pretty much exclusively male and tip the other person off even though that other person may not understand why they have a reason to be suspicious.

Dena you may be right, Id never talk like that in front of my parents and surely I can fem things up all "proper" should the occasion call for it like work or a date....  Im unfortunately NOT a "GG", I was raised male and I haven't been at this transition business for very long either, about 1 1/2 years... I am who I am here especially though    Oh and I am pretty "conservative" as well but more what Id call libertarian, I CHOOSE to live in SD after all and Im very into the gun culture as well 

Thanks though my voice sucks in my mind but people tell me it isnt bad at all so I just try to not worry about it so much anymore 
 

I call myself more of a constitutionalist if you want a proper label. Well if you have only been in it 1 1/2 years I will cut you some slack as old habits die hard and I was still looking at myself pretty hard 2 years after surgery or 4 years after starting full time. As for giving up your past, you can't. I learned how to fix everything, programmed computers for 40 years and know a good deal about electronics and machines. I am sure it's not helping my image when people are having a problem fixing something and I walk over and fix it for them. Trap shooting was something I picked up after surgery. There are just sometimes when you don't care if you out yourself. Hopefully it's after people find out that you are a nice person to have around.

Very few people can judge their own voice. I think it has something to do with hearing your speech pattern so you know the voice is yours but what you are hearing on the recorder isn't matching what you heard through your head bones. I don't have that problem with recordings of my voice but I can now be detached from what I am hearing. It must have something with applying what I learned because it wasn't always that way. I also used to slur my words and forcing my self into a faster speech delivery by pre thinking what I will say eliminated that. Adding more inflection made a difference and made my delivery more interesting to me anyway. It's still not right but this is the first time I took a good look at it after many years. I think working so close to it's upper limits I could do more with it if I dropped the botom  but I already have far to much base in it.

The sample after your mother told you what to do is the one I am talking about. The pitch was good and sound quality was almost sexy but far enough away that the people you won't think you are attempting to take them to bed. It is the perfect telephone voice if you can maintain it. I can think of only one voice I like better and that was a receptionist that worked in our office and I wonder how many hearts she broke while placing our customers calls. She didn't work on her voice but it just naturally came out that way. She was even a bit surprised when I explained to her what others heard in her voice. And no, I didn't tell her how I knew that and why I was interested.   I think many GGs could get that type of voice if they just put a little effort into it. My neighbor is a Georgia girl with the accent and while she is a very nice person, her voice has a hard edge on it from the regional accent. She doesn't want to change it and because I know how much work it would be to change it, I will let her be happy with it.

  Lets take the political talk elsewhere and get back on topic.
Thanks
Mariah

I dont think cussing is exclusively male anymore. Maybe in some social environments the classic role models of feminine and masculine behaviour still are important, but I am not sure one has to bow to them just to be accepted. I am not a person who deliberately breaks gender stereotypes out of political desire or some notion that trans people should do this. But I do refuse to follow stereotypes if they dont go along with what I want to do. So yes, I do go there and fix a computer if someone struggles with it at work and I sometimes use bad words when I am angry. Maybe I am considered to be a dyke by some, but so be it. I agree on some parameters about language that are really strongly gendered - like inflection and voice melody and resonance, but I think those are mainly things that happen because of a female brain and throat development. I noticed for example that my shortened vocal chords now react a lot more to slight changes in muscle tension, so pitch variation is easier and just happens - at least if my brain goes into a relaxation and does not try to somehow produce the old voice that I was trained to use for a long time. But what topics to speak about and if one cusses or swears or not is in my opinion a purely social gender stereotype.

Cussing has become pretty common but at least in this country it still draw attention when it comes from the mouth of a woman. The whole trick to passing effectively is not to attract extra attention causing the viewer to look at you close. Yes sometimes you have to do something that will draw that attention and when that happens don't add to the distraction. Example would be to expect somebody to fix their computer and they send you. Viewer think well a woman was unexpected but she must have the skills to do the job or they wouldn't have sent her. While working you bang your hand and cuss. Viewer thinks can repair a computer and cuss like man, maybe I better think about this a little. The less the viewer thinks about you the better or at least that is my view.

I was wondering what it would be like to learn how to use the additional range and I though you might have to retrain your brain for more inflection. It sounds like you may not have to change as many habits to correctly access the new voice. That would speed up training and the main issue would be getting your hearing retrained to know when your voice is where it belongs. Still it means work to get it right but not as much.

I still have to get my voice recorded and I was going to do it yesterday but my neighbor called and I ended up with far to much second had smoke. A voice sample isn't good unless it's clean and that one wouldn't have been. I am not sure if I am going to escape the smoke tonight. I guess there is a good thing about choking up on smoke and that is I never picked up the habit.

Quote from: Dena on May 27, 2015, 11:09:53 AM
Cussing has become pretty common but at least in this country it still draw attention when it comes from the mouth of a woman. The whole trick to passing effectively is not to attract extra attention causing the viewer to look at you close. Yes sometimes you have to do something that will draw that attention and when that happens don't add to the distraction. Example would be to expect somebody to fix their computer and they send you. Viewer think well a woman was unexpected but she must have the skills to do the job or they wouldn't have sent her. While working you bang your hand and cuss. Viewer thinks can repair a computer and cuss like man, maybe I better think about this a little. The less the viewer thinks about you the better or at least that is my view.

That sounds very stressful. I want to let go and be who I am and not deny some parts of me - be that computer skills or cussing (is there a way that women cuss that is differently from "cuss like a man"?). I would rather not want to distract people from me - that would mean I would box myself up - isn't that a bad thing? It sounds like hiding a lot. I would not want to be regarded as trans either, but I also dont want to bend myself just to make people ignore me - I would rather think if they have contact with me, look at me, they will see me the right way...

QuoteI was wondering what it would be like to learn how to use the additional range and I though you might have to retrain your brain for more inflection. It sounds like you may not have to change as many habits to correctly access the new voice.

I guess it all depends on what you are doing now. I believe it is easier for me now, but others said it is harder for them. I am not sure why.

I dont think you would loose any abilities or voice parameters that you already had before the surgery - there are not so many changes happening there - if you know how to use resonance, projection, voice melody, inflection and all of that, you still can do the same thing after the surgery, just have to modify it a bit maybe

I think I may be a bit more passive than you in handling stress as I get up and walk around, go to the break room or go to the bathroom. Get my mind off it so I can go back refreshed. On the other hand, I can handle a good deal of stress.
Might also be I never have cussed and I never learned how to use it to release pressure. It might just be we are different  people and handle emotions different.

As for voice, that surgery keeps sounding more tempting. The one issue I have to think about is currently I am the only support for our product but there is someone who could handle support for a week or two. How long will it take to get a half usable voice on the phone. I go a very long time between calls so the odds of not getting a call in the 3 month recovery period are pretty good but one call might be possible.

I don't know if my mind is going or what but the instruction for recording my voice seem to have vanished or I forgot which thread they were on.

Well,,i don't cuss all the time if you think this of me now. I rarely do it and if so, I don't believe it is male... Hehe. Usually I just do what you do. Get out of the situation. But let's say a brick falls onto my foot, I will swear ;-)

Recovery from voice surgery is not fast. For me it was 4 weeks of absolute silence, then at least 2 weeks of talking not a lot. A couple of sentences a day. Basically as much as I would have written during the mute period. After 6 weeks, I was able to softly and without much volume have phone calls, explain not too complex things to students and such. This may be enough to do a phone support if the phone is good and you can talk in a low volume. I would day, the communication should be not too long. An hour of phone support may be difficult or result in a day or two of silence. After 8 weeks, things normalize and full voice use is allowed, but it will still be not a lot of volume and may get hoarse.

Quote from: Eva on May 26, 2015, 11:12:48 AM
These damn allergies from all the pollen get to me every spring  6 1/2 months post op...

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0zRauO3Cx1G

Hey Eva I've been following your posts, and with each update you sound better and better. I think you are sounding good I hope you are doing well.

Haven't been on here in a while but its good to see so many other Haben Girls  

Haven't caught up with any of the threads but Im sure there are some very happy girls and some not as much...

To those that are still in recovery I can tell that after 9 months it WILL get better 

I had the web glottoplasty and laser thinning and I gained about 6-7 notes... Not as much as Id hoped for but also a huge improvement... I simply no longer worry about my voice and it seems to work for me consistently on the phone now

http://vocaroo.com/i/s03fzYkxFzSt

You sound great Eva! I'm going to go to Haben myself once I can afford it.