makes sense about the CTA. If you loose one of the two pitch controlling muscles, of course the vocal range is limited a good deal by that. Maybe you can trainthe remaining muscle to take over a lot of that, but it probably is hard. I wonder what happens to the voice break though...

I am really puzzled over this because of the following

From the Doctors Web site

QuoteThe vocal cords are stretched and thinned by making a small incision in a skin crease in your neck and tightening the cartilages that now allow you to go from a regular to a falsetto voice. A "CTA" mimics contraction of the "singer's muscles", the crico-thyroids. When contracted the cricothyroids raise the pitch the way you could now if you engage your falsetto or "mixed" voice.

Then I did a little search and found this http://tips.how2improvesinging.com/mixed-voice/
The doctor seem to be calling the mouth voice and the falsetto voice a mixed voice but the link indicates it's between the chest and mouth voice. Maybe I should have asked a few more questions about this but I wasn't interested in it and I hadn't though about this aspect of it when I saw him. Otherwise I would have more information on it than this.

QuoteA "CTA" mimics contraction of the "singer's muscles", the crico-thyroids. When contracted the cricothyroids raise the pitch the way you could now if you engage your falsetto or "mixed" voice.

Yes - so basically the CTA will put you permanently in a mixed (head) voice or falsetto voice and you dont have a chest voice anymore, so you have no voice break anymore between chest voice and head voice - but you loose pitch range because it mimics the contraction of one of the two pitch regulating muscles and basically tightens that muscle permanently. So basically all it does is to take away the effort it takes to raise pitch by just permanently setting that muscle on "full contraction" with wires. The voice sounds the same as before when you make the effort to speak higher. I dont think this is desireable.
You then only have your vocalis muscle to control pitch and not your cricothyroid mucle, so you loose the ability to sing, too.

Quote from: anjaq on August 15, 2015, 11:36:49 AM
Yes - so basically the CTA will put you permanently in a mixed (head) voice or falsetto voice and you dont have a chest voice anymore, so you have no voice break anymore between chest voice and head voice - but you loose pitch range because it mimics the contraction of one of the two pitch regulating muscles and basically tightens that muscle permanently. So basically all it does is to take away the effort it takes to raise pitch by just permanently setting that muscle on "full contraction" with wires. The voice sounds the same as before when you make the effort to speak higher. I dont think this is desireable.
You then only have your vocalis muscle to control pitch and not your cricothyroid mucle, so you loose the ability to sing, too.

If you are only worried about your speaking voice or your voice is very low or you have problems keeping your voice in the proper range, then CTA is a consideration. If you don't fall into one or more of the above groups, I would consider CTA a disadvantage but it really is  a personal decision.

Yeah - well if you are really having an extremely deep voice maybe. Surgeons in Germany recommend it more often because it causes less issues with healing and is not a problem later on when it comes to intubations - with glottoplasty, it is probably adviseable to mention this to the anaesthesist at any further surgery to not endanger the suture. Still, for me it was not an option. I may not sing pretty, but I want to be able to try - and I am proud of having a big vocal range, even if I have lost some, I like to still be able to cross about 3 octaves with my voice...

Quote from: anjaq on August 15, 2015, 03:01:54 PM
Yeah - well if you are really having an extremely deep voice maybe. Surgeons in Germany recommend it more often because it causes less issues with healing and is not a problem later on when it comes to intubations - with glottoplasty, it is probably adviseable to mention this to the anaesthesist at any further surgery to not endanger the suture. Still, for me it was not an option. I may not sing pretty, but I want to be able to try - and I am proud of having a big vocal range, even if I have lost some, I like to still be able to cross about 3 octaves with my voice...

I can't speak with much authority, not knowing anyone personally who has undergone a CTA, but my thoughts are that it would change the voice in the way you describe.  If the CT muscles are permanently locked in then your head voice muscles would always be engaged or so it seems.  This means you can use your chest voice normally, but the head voice qualities would also be active, resulting in a mixed voice for your normal range that turns into head voice whenever you run out of room and your chest voice has to drop off.  One would think that the difference in quality would be much less jarring (less cracking at the end of your chest range) since the head voice tones were still semi-present even in the lower and mid range notes.  This is all hypothetical however and it would be interesting to hear what Dr. Haben or other surgeons who perform a CTA think.  Again, speaking hypothetically, but it is quite possible that the reason Dr. Haben's CTA results are so remarkable is because he combines them with a glottoplasty, which raises the chest voice into the range where it is better suited to blending with head and creates a sort of permanent mix.

Regarding mixed voice in general, it's a term that gets thrown around almost exclusively to singing technique.   Basically, everyone has a degree of overlap between their head and chest voices where you can sing or speak the same pitch using either set of muscles/registers.  It is possible to engage both sets of muscles simultaneously with practice (it's very difficult) and smooth out the break to avoid cracking or the yodel effect.  It's what most pop artists do when they are belting high notes.  The ones who have really mastered it can even vary the amount of each register to get the desired sound for a particular part of a song.  If they need it to be very loud and powerful, they might do something like 70% chest and 30% head.  If it needs to be more delicate but still project, they might do the opposite and so on and so forth. 

There is a person on this site who underwent the CTA procedure with Dr Haben about 2 months ago but I don't know if her voice is to the point were she can judge the results. She isn't a regular here but I will have to watch her thread to see if she post an update. One of the warnings about CTA is that it takes longer for the voice to be comfortable to use and that could be as much as a month off for her.


Edit: Here is the post where she discusses it. https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,188034.msg1722453.html#msg1722453

Quote from: Dena on August 16, 2015, 12:43:47 AM
There is a person on this site who underwent the CTA procedure with Dr Haben about 2 months ago but I don't know if her voice is to the point were she can judge the results. She isn't a regular here but I will have to watch her thread to see if she post an update.

Well if you are interested you might make a posting in her thread. Often members are notified if there is a new posting. It can be chosen in the settings.

Five weeks and and the voice was starting to sound good and I could speak with it for a while and then last week end happened. Nothing bad, I just spent both days around the house not speaking to anybody and thinking it might be about time I put up my first voice sample. Monday morning I crawled out of bed, went to work, opened my mouth and I lost my voice again. I think my body is in the process of getting rid of the sutures as the voice is a bit sore when I try to use it. That was something nobody warned me about so I am going to watch it and if it doesn't start getting better soon, I will be firing off an email to Dr Haben. I really didn't want permanent sutures but I am starting to see that there could be an advantage to using them depending on how long my voice remain mess up cleaning up the sutures.

The 30 day supply of Prilosec that was to prevent stomach acid from dissolving the sutures ran out last week so I guess Dr Haben was fine with the fact the suture can come out after a month. He did say if I had acid reflux that I would have been given more Prilosec but I suspect that was to keep the stomach acid off the still healing vocal cords and not to protect the suture.

Sorry I don't have have a voice sample, I know I owe everybody one but I sound really bad, almost as bad as three weeks after surgery.

IMHO... Janis Joplin had quite a unique sounding voice and it was undeniably female in its quality, however a few less bottles of Jacks and a few less cigs might have done it the world of good, but hey it worked for her ...maybe even a new career for you? Have you ever seen yourself in lights? Stranger things have happened...Just playing around  I hope it works out great and you get a voice you are happy with.

Sarah T

Well I don't drink because I never acquired a taste for it and I have allergies to tobacco smoke so I fear I am destine to live my life away from the bright light. In addition, all thoughts of singing left my poor little head when my voice changed and I turned into a bull frog. If this voice works out, my ear sure isn't trained to sing so I may emit sound that send people running. While there is good possibility I might not be able to sing, I do question if some of the modern artist can.

Before my voice went sour agin, I learned enough about it that the surgery already has far exceeded what I expected it to deliver. I thought it would just shove my range up a bit and I would still be working in a confined part of my range. Instead, it has opened up the entire female range and more. I have lived many years with such a confined area of my voice and now have the tool I have always been looking for to use all I have learned over the years. It may not be the perfect voice but it will still be far better than what I had.

I figure I better put up a 6 week update. I think I am a card carrying member of the voice of the day club. The sore throat I had in week 5 cleared up and I could speak for a few minutes and then my voice would enter the I have a cold mode where it would flatten out. I could still speak with it but pitch was limited and tonal quality was pretty sad. Yesterday, Saturday I had a head ache so I stayed home and caught up on my sleeping. Today, Sunday the I used the voice as I went over to my mom's house for cards and food. The voice has sort of returned and isn't fading but now it sounds like I need to clear my throat but there is nothing to clear. I need to play with it more but either the healing is uneven or I am dealing with the issue of different length vocal cords. When I went through puberty I spent a long time getting the male voice down and the change in cord configuration may mean I need to learn how the different cord length functions in the female range. I am beginning to think it might almost be worth it to have a doctor take a peek at the surgery to see what's going on in there. I have  heard people with great sounding voices at 6 weeks and mine isn't sounding the same from day to day. I really can't say I wasn't warned on this because Dr Haben indicated it might take longer for me to get my voice back.

Dena, I hope you continue to recover well and continue to see improvement. I read thru this thread and wanted to mention that I posted an example of what is "chest" voice for me now and what is falsetto for me now. I am by no means a singer, so this is me attempting these things. I don't know if they are technically what I am describing them as. I hope it's helpful to some of the earlier discussion around the CTA.

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,188034.msg1739389.html#msg1739389

Wow I guess I am pretty lucky here. I sing, been singin since I was a kid in church and school and garage bands. I am alto c-4, but I can push. higher is easy if i speak from the mouth softly. It's more proper pitch to sound feminine. If you put emotion in it is always gonna drop. I just have to remember, like acting ya know your part. I ain't no freddy mercury, but I can pull off woman without even tryin. Sorry you all have gone thru so much pain. I am a poor desert girl who can't even afford ffs< and I make decent money too! @ divorces 2 kids my credits a rap. I still got the house n the crappy truck an were doing allright  

It has been 9 1/2 weeks and my voice is still all over the place. The problem seems to be it is still weak and if I attempt to use anywhere near normal volume, the voice fails like it would if you yell to loud. There is still a little soreness so I think there is some healing going on and I may be well past 3 months before I can use the voice at regular volume and maintain the quality. The voice may sound rough and unpolished because it won't last long enough for me to practice with. Just a minute or two is enough  chop the high end of the voice off pushing me into the lower range. I can use it to communicate with and it's higher than the falsetto but it's probably not passable when it gets like that. I am providing two samples. The first was where a while back and it's my pre surgical trained voice. I don't have a sample of my male voice but it was much lower. The second sample was taken yesterday morning and should be a bit over 200Hz. If your ears are sharp, you will hear the voice start to fail about half way through the recording. Also the recording is at the sweet spot where it projects well. My relaxed voice is in the 180-190 Hz range. To produce this voice, I still have to use the trained voice method and if I return to the chest voice I am around 130-140 Hz. I am not really upset that I still have to use a trained voice as I expected it even before I put the deposit down. My old voice was so low I need to use the combination of both trained and surgery to reach the lower feminine range and be comfortable when I use it. The total frequency gain would be about 120-130 Hz off my old chest voice. Now the good side of it is I can work the range of 160Hz to almost 400Hz without entering the falsetto. I expected my voice just to be moved up and it was. I didn't expect to have such a large range. Working that range is just something I tested and because of the breaking up of the voice I can't slide through the entire range, but I think I will be able to.

Old trained
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1pcm9z3Gk9J

Current
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1z8x2Mh9d4e

Quote from: Dena on September 21, 2015, 04:21:45 PM
It has been 9 1/2 weeks and my voice is still all over the place. The problem seems to be it is still weak and if I attempt to use anywhere near normal volume, the voice fails like it would if you yell to loud. There is still a little soreness so I think there is some healing going on and I may be well past 3 months before I can use the voice at regular volume and maintain the quality. The voice may sound rough and unpolished because it won't last long enough for me to practice with. Just a minute or two is enough  chop the high end of the voice off pushing me into the lower range. I can use it to communicate with and it's higher than the falsetto but it's probably not passable when it gets like that. I am providing two samples. The first was where a while back and it's my pre surgical trained voice. I don't have a sample of my male voice but it was much lower. The second sample was taken yesterday morning and should be a bit over 200Hz. If your ears are sharp, you will hear the voice start to fail about half way through the recording. Also the recording is at the sweet spot where it projects well. My relaxed voice is in the 180-190 Hz range. To produce this voice, I still have to use the trained voice method and if I return to the chest voice I am around 130-140 Hz. I am not really upset that I still have to use a trained voice as I expected it even before I put the deposit down. My old voice was so low I need to use the combination of both trained and surgery to reach the lower feminine range and be comfortable when I use it. The total frequency gain would be about 120-130 Hz off my old chest voice. Now the good side of it is I can work the range of 160Hz to almost 400Hz without entering the falsetto. I expected my voice just to be moved up and it was. I didn't expect to have such a large range. Working that range is just something I tested and because of the breaking up of the voice I can't slide through the entire range, but I think I will be able to.

Old trained
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1pcm9z3Gk9J

Current
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1z8x2Mh9d4e

Thanks for sharing and glad to hear your strength is coming back.

Hey Dena!

Thank you for sharing that voice sample, I can already hear the changes! I guess at this point, all the rest of the feminine voice will manifest around the 6 month mark. Glad you're recovering--and again thanks for putting this up, it is reassuring that you're making progress.

A question for you: with the surgery you received, how do you feel about your singing voice at this point? By all means, I am not a singer myself, I just enjoy doing it from time to time (chiefly for fun) and wonder how a surgery like this has its effects on those who undergo the procedure.

Audree

I stopped singing at puberty because my ranges was restricted and low. Voice therapy was limited as to what they could do with my voice as you can hear from the old trained voice. I thought the surgery would move my voice up a bit but it greatly extended the range. The old trained voice ranged from 130 to 196 Hz and the new trained voice ranges from around 170 to nearly 400 Hz so far. I didn't expect that to happen and nobody ever talked about it. An additional feature is with the old voice, the higher pitches were hard to hit. The new voice, most of the range is easy to access. For a singing voice the triple is best avoided and if you just do VFS, then Dr Kim or Dr Haben are both able to do the job. Both surgeries are pretty much the same as far as results, but with a voice as low as yours, you should questions the doctors as far as how much tie they will offer. You should also get some speech therapy to learn how to control you voice because I think you will need to use a trained voice combined with the surgery. The difference between the two surgeries is Dr Kim uses a micro scalpel and permeate sutures where as Dr Haben uses laser and sutures that dissolve. You will get the basic idea of the procedure  form the link

http://www.professionalvoice.org/feminization.aspx

Yes, I think I might just get the CTA--on the website it says it restricts the lower octaves--however passing is more important to me. Also... I'm a terrible singer anyhow, so I don't stand to lose an amazing singing voice.

I think I may just be joining Team Haben! Thanks for the insights, Dena

I was a terrible singer because my old voice would only handle the very low parts and it's range was so limited. The new voice opens up some interesting possibilities. I figured that the small gain CTA would give me wasn't worth restricting my future options. You should also consider to speech therapy now in order to learn more about your voice. If you are correct about how low it is, you will need to use the trained voice like I do and it will help Dr Haben get a correct reading before the surgery. The trained voice is something that takes some time to become comfortable with.

Feel free to ask anymore questions you might have as I am just passing along knowledge given to me by others and welcome to team Haben.