So there's lots of chat about various voice surgeries available, but little talk about voice therapy.  Is voice therapy something that we shy away from for a reason?  I'd love to be able to remedy my voice issues (which give me away bigtime) through voice coaching or something less intrusive than vocal cord surgery, but if it's largely unsuccessful or stressful on the voice, then perhaps surgery is the way to go.

Thoughts?  Anyone tried voice therapy of vocal coaching with great results?

(I guess worst case scenario it doesn't work but it helps me with my speech patterns rather than pitch, and I use surgery at a later date to remedy the pitch on a permanent basis.)

Quote from: StartingOver on August 21, 2015, 05:36:58 AM
So there's lots of chat about various voice surgeries available, but little talk about voice therapy.  Is voice therapy something that we shy away from for a reason?  I'd love to be able to remedy my voice issues (which give me away bigtime) through voice coaching or something less intrusive than vocal cord surgery, but if it's largely unsuccessful or stressful on the voice, then perhaps surgery is the way to go.

Thoughts?  Anyone tried voice therapy of vocal coaching with great results?

(I guess worst case scenario it doesn't work but it helps me with my speech patterns rather than pitch, and I use surgery at a later date to remedy the pitch on a permanent basis.)

It isn't hard.  Watch a couple of YouTube videos on how and practice a lot.  I don't really think vocal surgery is worth the rrst

Voice training for me was hard.

My reasons for surgery:

I could raise the pitch but not get a passable voice, no matter how I tried.

I was also afraid of damaging my vocal folds. Improperly done training is proven to do that.

I also did not want to be able to fall back into my male voice. Why? For one it can happen by accident. I'm a mom. I have kids. They get into stuff. I might see them in danger and have to call out to them. Secondly, there is the stereotypical media image of a "tr***y" where she relaxes her voice and the male voice comes booming out. I don't want that. I'm pleased to say that now I couldn't sound male now even if I tried.

Then there is not just talking. It's laughing, coughing, sneezing, clearing your throat, screaming, sighing, expressing disgust etc.

Also, think of what happens when you're in bed with a sexual partner. I want to be noisy during sex, and I don't want to sound like a man. I have men interested in me and maybe sometime I will end up back in a committed relationship once my divorce is final and I've completed SRS. I want him to see me as a woman, full stop. He will know I'm trans (I believe in full disclosure) but I am a woman. I want to sound like one in bed. One woman here said she was clocked in her sleep due to her voice. I do not want that.

Training can get expensive. Yes, there are YouTube videos but I think some of them are ineffective and can damage your vocal folds. FYFV by Andrea James and Calpernia Addams is the only one I found to make sense. A speech language pathologist for me would cost $150 per session. Once per week for God alone knows how long. Then there is time I have to take to attend the sessions. For that money I could put it toward surgery. It cost me about $15k to go to Seoul and get it done but I paid for upgraded (prestige class) tickets and my mom went with me. You can do it for less. Dr Haben in NY is another option, as he charges less and surgery with him doesn't involve international travel if you're in the U.S.

My speech patterns were feminine with a male pitch. In fact my brain operates much like a natal female. I blame this on my naturally lower testosterone levels plus I'm quite possibly intersex or a DES child. My voice did not deepen until my late teens, in fact. So all I really needed was a pitch increase and a slight tweaking of the timbre by getting rid of the male undertones. That has worked very well for me.

So all of this is why I chose surgery.

Now, that's not to say training isn't viable. It works for many trans women but it is something you must commit too wholeheartedly. But to say voice surgery isn't worth it isn't really true. My surgically corrected voice has done wonders for my passability and by extension my confidence. I have zero issues going out in public and I can be the loud, bubbly person I always was.

And I've not seen anyone who had surgery say it was not worth it to them, unless their voice did not change much.

Good thoughts - thanks.

I think I'm gonna try a few sessions of vocal training with a legit, licensed, and experienced speech therapist (and not a drama teacher or some of the others who purport to offer such services).  No progress and it'll be time for a piggy bank with "Seoul" written on the side.  A big piggy bank

I've heard very little criticism of Yeson and his costs are reasonable.  And if I can drag my ass to Bangkok for Chettawut, I think a quick jaunt to see Yeson should be like a rather nice vacation in comparison.

Another thing to add to my growing list of trans-related needs.

I think that is a good move. There is also Dr Haben in NY. He charges less, travel cost is less and his results are good too. He also offers some other procedures like a CTA and trach shave.

Using a professional SLP is good because you have less chance of damaging your vocal folds with improper training. There are a few here who have had surgery and had no end of problems because of vocal abuse from improper training. But there are others who have had remarkable results thanks to training in concert (no pun intended) with vocal surgery. Unless you're naturally blessed with feminine prosody and resonance like I am, you will need some training post op to get a decently passable voice. And I'm going to see a SLP just to get an evaluation and see if there is anything I need to do.

I did both therapy and surgery and I would recommend therapy first. I did extensive therapy 35 years ago and with what I knew, I did a review of my voice now. I discovered all these years my voice never really worked because it was far to low to produce a feminine pitch. When I contacted Dr Haben, I knew what he could provide and what I needed before I stepped into his office. After his review, he agreed with what I knew and though my voice is still healing, I think he may have provide a bit more pitch and far more range than I expected out of the surgery.

As surgical voice is 50% surgery and 50% therapy and therapy before surgery will still apply to the post surgical voice. If nothing else therapy will make you an informed consumer when you decide on surgery. If your voice is high enough, therapy will put you into the female range and surgery will not be required.

I think people are just more likely to *post* about surgery, for whatever reason.

I did voice therapy on my own - basically, I recorded myself over and over again and practiced for probably hundreds of hours - and my voice passes consistently now. (In fact, early on, voice was sometimes what tipped people over into gendering me correctly.) I can scream/sneeze/cough in a feminine range, can sing albeit without much power, and am gendered female 100% of the time on the phone. So I'd say it worked.

I did practice inflection and intonation far more than pitch, and was fortunate enough to have started as a light tenor. Erasing the male chest resonance and practicing enough to hold the pitch at sort of a medium to low alto, which is comfortably within my natural range, has been all the work I needed to do in terms of voice range versus manner of speaking (but it was still a lot of work!).

I did therapy.  I had 14 sessions at $140 each.  My voice passed fine until a trachea shave, then it went lower.  It's now 15 months post trachea shave and its just now coming back.  But, I  pass when I think about it.  I'll be good to go in a couple more months.

It is a lot of work.  It won't work for everyone.  But it is a good place to start. I learned more than just pitch.  I learned phrasing, intonation, singing, coughing and pronunciation.

Overall, excellent.

Hugs,

Jen

I am going to try out voice therapy with UCSF.  I have done a fair amount on my own as well.  In my case insurance is going to cover it, which is surprising, so the risk is low to try it out.  But I understand why it is a hard sell.  It's expensive if you pay out of pocket and the results are unknown if they are better than doing it on your own.  I am thinking about doing yeson as well, but my thoughts are that some voice therapy would be helpful if I do yeson later.

Quote from: Dena on August 21, 2015, 09:42:19 AM
As surgical voice is 50% surgery and 50% therapy and therapy before surgery will still apply to the post surgical voice. If nothing else therapy will make you an informed consumer when you decide on surgery. If your voice is high enough, therapy will put you into the female range and surgery will not be required.

I think this is correct. Pitch raising is done by the surgery. Everything else is pretty much training or natural ability.

Therapy did nothing for me. I almost get the sense that they were trying to lower my confidence in my voice so I'd keep coming to them.

I learned what I needed from internet videos (particularly candiFLA). In the end I didn't need surgery.

I've heard tell that some people's voices are so deep, that no amount of therapy will help.

I think surgery is a more popular topic simply because there have been advancements in technique that have proven to be much more effective than what was available in the past.  People are always more curious about new developments, and those who have undergone the procedures have been more than generous to spread word to the community about their experiences.  As has been mentioned, the two are rarely mutually exclusive, and even in the surgery threads you will find talk about vocal therapy and exercises.

Voice therapy is wonderful, and should not be overlooked by any means, but the information has been out there for a much longer time which is probably the reason you don't see as many new topics about it.  It has nothing to do with its effectiveness.

Personally, the approach I've taken is to study with a female voice coach and take singing lessons for about two years.  I have made great progress, but am electing to have surgery in the fall because I believe it will get me just a little bit closer to the voice I'm looking for, and because I believe it will require less effort on my part when all is said and done.  (no pun intended)

People say that hormones do nothing to your voice but I think that is incorrect. I know I gained pitch once I started HRT. It could be that going out in public forces me higher but either way, my pitch went up.

I think hormones do very little - maybe adding some softness. Antihormones, particularly Spironolactone, can have a dehydrating effect and reduce vocal fold mass and thus make the voice lighter and a bit higher in pitch, but its not really a permanent effect unless one takes that drug long term.

Almost 2 years ago, there was almost nothing written here about voice surgery - in fact, the Topic of the dubforum did not even include "voice surgery". It was 99% about voice therapy and internet voice training solutions. Basically it started when Jennygirl and a couple of others went to Yeson for voice surgery and found out that apparently now there is a reliable way to feminize the voice through surgery - before that, the general opinion was that voice surgery is not worth it at all, can destroy a voice, will only lead to hoarse voices or too high voices... so there was a bit of a run that started on voice surgeries, given that this option now seemed a viable one and then posts multiplied, lots of people shared their own experiences with surgeries to show that it really is an option now. The forum topic was changed and then people discovered alternatives to Yeson and posted about those....

You are right that the posts about voice training are kind of in the minority at present, but I think no one minds it if one asks about techniques or therapists who do good work in that field. For the vast majority, this is still the primary and only solution. Also those who did surgery - almost all of them did voice therapy before an/or after surgery as well. Surgery is for most more like a "supportive surgery" that makes the things done in voice therapy easier.

I think most or all posts in the "does my voice pass" threads are non-surgical changed voices.

Dr Haben has been doing voice surgeries for 10 years and I am not sure how long Dr Kim has been in the business. Others also preform the surgery but I am not aware of the details. The voice surgery most common today originally involved suturing the cords together without causing them to fuse. Failure of the suture would cause the voice to drop resulting in a bad name for the surgery. Improvements over the years have eliminate this other problems and I suspect word of mouth has been selling this surgery up to now. I agree that Jenny has been a great source of information and has help not only Dr Kim but other doctors as well by show what the state of the art surgery can do.

The thing to remember is that jenny did a good deal of work refining the voice she has and it wasn't surgery alone that produced that voice.

Quote from: StartingOver on August 21, 2015, 05:36:58 AM
So there's lots of chat about various voice surgeries available, but little talk about voice therapy. 

I hear you. I REALLY hear you.

What about many of us who cannot afford expensive VFS surgery?

Since the first hugely-followed thread about Yeson came out, there have been others about Dr. Haben and so on. It seems voice therapy-related helpful threads have become an extinct species.

Also it seems FFS is taking over as well. So now it seems people are getting "quick passability" by means of spending AT LEAST 40K US on both FFS and VHS. And that's just the basics. Others also spend on body-related surgery (breasts, hips, stomach, fat redistribution, you name it, the sky is the limit, kids today should be al over studying to become plastic surgeons lol).

I am all for surgery to help one finally achieve the confidence one needs to stop being nervous and self-conscious in public as a woman. I'd do it myself if I could pay for it.  But then again, what about the ones like me who can't afford the surgeries?

If I ever become successful at speaking 100% convincingly female, I SWEAR I will start a thread on here to help people who can't afford surgery, improve their voices. It's long overdue.

Cheers

Bibi B.

Quote from: bibilinda on August 25, 2015, 10:28:41 PM
I hear you. I REALLY hear you.

What about many of us who cannot afford expensive VFS surgery?

Since the first hugely-followed thread about Yeson came out, there have been others about Dr. Haben and so on. It seems voice therapy-related helpful threads have become an extinct species.

Also it seems FFS is taking over as well. So now it seems people are getting "quick passability" by means of spending AT LEAST 40K US on both FFS and VHS. And that's just the basics. Others also spend on body-related surgery (breasts, hips, stomach, fat redistribution, you name it, the sky is the limit, kids today should be al over studying to become plastic surgeons lol).

I am all for surgery to help one finally achieve the confidence one needs to stop being nervous and self-conscious in public as a woman. I'd do it myself if I could pay for it.  But then again, what about the ones like me who can't afford the surgeries?

If I ever become successful at speaking 100% convincingly female, I SWEAR I will start a thread on here to help people wh can't afford surgery, improve their voices. It's long overdue.

Cheers

Bibi B.

Well yeah that's all well and good. I wish more people would start threads on voice training. There is room for everyone.

I don't think surgery is that expensive though. Certainly cheaper than FFS and cheaper than SRS. Might be around the same price as an orchi in some cases, actually.

As for FFS, you can pass and look good without it. I can't, which is why I'm going to get it. I mean I had one woman here who told me I look like Morgan Freeman for crying out loud, and then proceeded to taunt me in PM. So yeah, I'm a bit hung up on it. Hormones may be doing something, but I don't think it is enough for me to be passable to the degree that I want. I want to be happy.

I have a very flexible voice but needed guidance. So I went on this Forum to look for a speech therapist. I tried two of them Andrea James, USA, but she was in the USA and time zones became an issue. Then I found an incredible speech therapist in Australia, Sheryl Mailing. She has been fantastic and I have had 12 sessions with her. Try the threrapy sessions first.

First I want to say - its in my opinion pretty much an abomination that treatment for transsexuality is regarded as a private matter. The medical officials still seem to think that we make a lifestlye choice and decide to live as the opposite gender and then want the surgeries and all that to get to that goal. When in reality for a lot of us, it is not a choice, it is a matter of doing this (and "passing") or suffering severe depression and suicidal thoughts or eventually actions. So in my opinion, even the coverage of GRS, electrolysis, hormones and psychotherapy by health insurance as it is happening in some of the Euro countries does not go far enough. Some people get VFS covered, I even know some who got FFS covered, and I think this is the way to go - it should be like that everywhere just as with any other reconstructive surgery for other medical conditions.

But given the situation, I definitely think it is possible to live without VFS and FFS. When I transitioned 17 years ago, both of these were almost no option - FFS was only done by Dr O and very expensive, VFS was not very reliable at all. So only the most desparate took those steps. And the other ones lived on as well. Nowadays these options exist and are becoming more affordable and widespread, so more people use it, but I doubt people look and sound worse pre-transition than in the 1990ies

What might be a consideration though for the forum mods is, if there should be two subforums about voice surgery and voice therapy, but personally I think this is not needed. The voice therapy people just have to post more and the voice surgery threads will probably subside a bit once the buzz is over. It already does not make sense to start another Yeson experience thread because there are already all those experiences out there, same will happen to the other surgeons as well - eventually I believe there may be only a few threads showing ongoing experiences and development of the voices of those who had been there. After all, still >90% will do voice therapy only and almost 100% will do voice therapy at some point (surgery or no surgery), so that topic definitely is not dead!

WARNING: I'm going to be brutally honest here about some things.

The problem I have is that some think that surgery is a waste of time. I would heartily disagree since I had the surgery and the results have completely transformed my life. For the first time I have close to no worries being outed because of my voice and even if I'm outed by my appearance, my voice will make the person making that assessment based on my appearance change their minds or at least think twice. Yes, the voice is absolutely that powerful, and a voice which cannot slip back into a male sounding one is invaluable. I don't even have to think about it and the ability to simply speak spontaneously is invaluable.

You hear some trans women who you can tell are consciously thinking about their voice when they talk. There is one on TV (not Caitlyn Jenner) who looks absolutely gorgeous but if you heard her on the phone, you would probably think twice about how to gender her. Not only that, the way she speaks sounds slow and deliberate like she has to think about it. I mean some people will be able to get to a point where they don't have to think or prepare so that their voice will pass when they open their mouth, but a lot won't. And I feel that tends to restrict me in how I live my life. I lead meetings, have meetings with vendors and associates, sometimes walk around the floor at work talking to various people. It's a high stress environment especially when we have big news to cover and I'm fighting off 10 fires at once. I need to be spontaneous. I also have kids and they get into stuff. If I call out to them, I don't want to sound like a guy by accident.

There is also the problem whereby some trans women assess their voices as passable when in reality they sound totally masculine. This is not to insult anyone but it is a much needed dose of reality. Someone told me that her voice sounds "gender neutral" at best yet when I heard it, it sounded unambiguously male. Another friend of mine is a much older trans woman and a college professor. When I was talking to her before well I was thinking about the surgery I asked her how she manages to survive with her voice like that.  She said that her voice sounds "good enough" and people gender her female in person. She also said that on the phone she doesn't care about being called "sir" because nobody sees her. Well, I most certainly do! I feel like I'm not being taken seriously at all.

I do get that not everyone can have or even wants surgery. THAT IS TOTALLY FINE. But to dismiss it as useless is totally off base. I get that some people can train their voices. I tried. The lower tones were there and annoying me. I couldn't train them out no matter how I tried. The surgery got rid of them.

But training may work for you. It's free. What have you got to lose?

I also think the most valuable thread in this forum is the "does my voice pass" thread. You need honest feedback. Even listening to yourself you need to record yourself and listen. What comes out of your mouth is completely different from what is in your head.

So, TL; DR - surgery is not useless, training is good but get HONEST feedback.