Where am I going wrong?

Without more information, it's impossible to tell. Praat will tell you about the pitch and posting voice samples will allow us to judge them by ear.

Quote from: blossom on March 11, 2016, 03:44:06 PM
Where am I going wrong?

The principal difference between male and female voice is the chest resonance. This is the technique I've used to eliminate chest resonance (credit the CandiFLA videos which, alas, have been taken down):

1. I spoke in the highest, squeakiest voice I could manage. I concentrated on remembering the exact position my throat was in. In practice this meant my voicebox was raised a fraction of an inch and my throat was "squeezed".

2. I would then position my throat exactly that way, but speak normally. Everything that came out of my mouth sounded female when I did that.

You could use this service to make a few recordings and share them so people can give a few hints:

http://vocaroo.com/


*hugs*

Have you tried seeing a voice coach? They could help give you tips.

Also, keep in mind there are also cis people with voices that don't exactly sound feminine or masculine, or "right" according to their bodies. I hear women with a pretty low voice and think they're a man but then I look at them and they're actually women! And men whose voices sound feminine, and I'd hear them on tv without looking and thought they were women, but they're actually men. It might be uncommon, but it happens, so don't get too discouraged if you feel like you don't sound totally "right", because voices are pretty diverse and I hear a lot of cis people whose voices don't sound like voices we'd expect.

For example the singer of this song:


I heard this song all the time on the radio, and I had no idea who the singer was, but I was totally convinced it was a woman, until a friend told me who the singer is and said "he" so I was like "What??? But I was convinced it was a woman singing!", and then I just laughed at myself.

Back in 99, I remember Sting put out a song called Desert Rose where he was doing a duet with an Algerian male singer named Cheb Mami (). When I first heard the song, I thought Sting was dueting with a woman, but it turned out to be a man. I was amazed because I was like, "How does this guy sound like that?" Such awesome voice control!

Yeah I only knew it was a guy because I watched the video of Desert Rose, otherwise the voice sounds pretty high and at some points of the song it's just really feminine.
I'm sure there are many other examples.

I'm not on T yet but I was told my voice sounds naturally masculine (and I make no efforts to make it sound lower). I tend to disagree but maybe because I am pretty hard on myself. I have a feeling it's harder for trans women to fix their voice though, for some reason, so I often see they go to voice coaches to get some help.

In order to get a feminine voice, you need pitch and inflection. Without a feminine speech pattern, a feminine pitch will still sound male. Because it's very hard judging this in your own voice, it helps to have somebody with a trained ear to pick out the problems so you know what to correct.

Guys just need to be less expressive and drop into the chest voice, something I can teach pretty fast and have done several times on the site.

You should experiment with your voice, memorize different positions. I agree that the female voice seems to come more from the throat, and the male voice from the chest. Sometimes especially if I get angry and use a higher pitch to yell or if I try to sing with a higher pitch I can feel my throat being in a different position from the one I normally have when I talk. It also hurts in my case because apparently I'm not supposed to do that, it puts strain on my throat so I try not to go too high pitched when I sing or yell.

The best tip I can give is to experiment and pay attention to the different positions of your throat.

Dena, what do you mean by feminine speech pattern? I'm curious.

Women use much more pitch range when they speak putting more emotion in their voice. In a way you could almost think of it as a feminine accent. Syllables can contain more pitch changes or may slide over a pitch range. Think of saying good morning. You can say it relatively flat or the good would be low pitch and the morning would start high and drop to a mid range pitch. The usage of the larger range triggers the mind to ID the voice as feminine, not because of the pitch but because of the amount of range being used. This is why FTM need to put less expression in their voices.

Where it is most noticed is in the voice forum where a person returns from voice surgery with a feminine pitch but still using the male speech pattern. You will also hear it when somebody is working at the upper end of their range and is just unable to get the need pitch range from the voice. It can sound more feminine for the latter to drop to a lower pitch so they have the range to work with.

I have to agree that pitch is only part and can be overcome with other clues. Just as if you are 1m90 tall, you still can "pass" if more of the other things are right. Of course if you are 1m90 tall, have a masculine voice, wide shoulders, short hair and masculine facial features, it will be too hard. "Passing" is always about balancing out masculine features with female features and so a voice can sound female even if it is not sounding feminine but rather has a lower female range pitch. Of course below maybe a low C (130 Hz), that will not work, so it should be at least somewhere around the E or 150 Hz to make this work, but that is a pitch that almost all people with a masculinized voice can reach.

From there two main issues arise: resonance and prosody. Resonance means that the voice should resonate fore in the upper area - head, throat, mouth (but not too much nose or you sound nasal or "stereotypical gay") rather than in the lower throat or chest. There are some ways to train this and it can become second nature. I learned this with "Melanie Anne Phillips Voice tapes" back in the 1990ies, but they still exist as an updated version in MP3 - the other good program to train it is "Finding your female voice", which uses a bit of a different approach, but they aim a bit high at the pitch, there is no need to target 200 Hz and sadly the FYFV instructions are a rather boring and long exercise, so I would try the other one first, which would be a shortcut, if it works for you.
With a more forward resonance and a pitch in the "upper male" or gender neutral range (150-170 Hz) you should already be perceived as female most of the time when your appearance matches this. It may still be hard on the phone though.

The second big part is prosody, meaning the way you speak. Intonations, voice melody, pitch range. For me, getting this right was mostly about basically reall believing that I am a woman truely (not thinking of myself as "trans") and then let go of old habits, allowing my voice to express itself more. But it may help to train this a bit by either trying to emulate speakers that sound cleraly female on TV or Radio - Audiobooks are great too, because female speakers speaking female characters there often use almost overemphasized female prosody to make the character more alive. Talk after them - see if you can match their voice melody and intinations without matching their pitch (!). You cannot get a female prosody if you force your voice in a pitch range that is already hard to reach. Its a bit like lifting a heavy weight and then dance - its much easier to just carry a little weight and then dance, because you will have to do both - lifting weight (raising pitch) a little, and dance (using a wide pitch range for voice melody). As a sidenote this is why I got voice surgery because basically it "lifts part of the weight for you" and so you are more free to dance

Good luck

Oh and for fun, contra to the videos above of men sith nearly female voices, here is a woman that has a very low voice - but in my opinion she still would mostly be identified as female by most people, but her voice seriously is as low as my voice was originally...

Quote from: GeekGirl on March 11, 2016, 07:49:25 PM
Back in 99, I remember Sting put out a song called Desert Rose where he was doing a duet with an Algerian male singer named Cheb Mami  When I first heard the song, I thought Sting was dueting with a woman, but it turned out to be a man. I was amazed because I was like, "How does this guy sound like that?" Such awesome voice control!(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3lWwBslWqg).

I want to share a video too, where I thought it was a woman who sang. But later I found out that's a man. His name is Radu Marian. He went through the puberty and can grow a full beard. But his larynx quit growing, therefor he can sing with that high pitch.

I met a student at university once - his voice was totally close to being female. I would not have taken the voice to me a male voice except the prosody was more masculine, but pitch - very much in the female area. I don't know what happened to him in puberty - maybe some sort of deviation like in that singer - maybe his larynx did not change. He was more nerdish looking though. I am sure he was teased a lot because of that voice. It happens, but for those men who have it happen it is often more of a thing they dislike, while for us of course it would be a dream come true. But this is a bit offtopic as the topic still is about how to make a voice that passes always as male into a female voice, right? We cannot go back and stop our larynx from being changed by testosterone.

But why does testosterone change voices in trans guys making it lower and estrogen doesn't do the same to trans women changing their voices?

T cause the vocal cords to grow in length and become somewhat more massive causing them to vibrate at a lower frequency. The size of the larynx also increases causing a lower resonance.  E or the lack of T will not reverse the growth. VFS ties the cords together effectively shorting them resulting in a higher pitch. Voice training can change the resonance of the larynx and may tighten the cord resulting in a higher pitch

Quote from: Dena on March 12, 2016, 04:45:49 PM
T cause the vocal cords to grow in length and become somewhat more massive causing them to vibrate at a lower frequency. The size of the larynx also increases causing a lower resonance.  E or the lack of T will not reverse the growth. VFS ties the cords together effectively shorting them resulting in a higher pitch. Voice training can change the resonance of the larynx and may tighten the cord resulting in a higher pitch

Oh ok, it makes sense now.

Quote from: Sebby Michelango on March 12, 2016, 05:36:53 AM
I want to share a video too, where I thought it was a woman who sang. But later I found out that's a man. His name is Radu Marian. He went through the puberty and can grow a full beard. But his larynx quit growing, therefor he can sing with that high pitch.

Hi Sebby,

Whoa... Radu's is not the voice of a man or a woman, but of an angel. It is a remarkable voice.

Today I was at the local science museum with my kids and one of the lecturers there was a woman with a low, slightly raspy voice like Emma Stone or Demi Moore. She had a little bit of a tough girl edge to her, which is how I see myself, and I thought how great it would be to just have a voice like her's. It's not a dainty little sweet-sounding voice by any means, but you would never mistake it for a man's voice. Just a tough little South Philly girl, much like Brooklyn, where I'm from.

Quote from: GeekGirl on March 13, 2016, 03:29:04 PM
Hi Sebby,

Whoa... Radu's is not the voice of a man or a woman, but of an angel. It is a remarkable voice.

Today I was at the local science museum with my kids and one of the lecturers there was a woman with a low, slightly raspy voice like Emma Stone or Demi Moore. She had a little bit of a tough girl edge to her, which is how I see myself, and I thought how great it would be to just have a voice like her's. It's not a dainty little sweet-sounding voice by any means, but you would never mistake it for a man's voice. Just a tough little South Philly girl, much like Brooklyn, where I'm from.

We have difference opinions here. I think Radu's voice sounds like a young woman's when he sing middle notes. But the highest tones sound more like a soprano boy's voice. But I'm not a expert.

Wow. What great feedback. I am glad so many people responded!