Attended a great talk by a voice/speech therapist (Cate Madill) who specialises in trans voices in Sydney yesterday and it was really informative and helpful.
There was lots of interesting points but the take aways for me were.
- shouldn't need many sessions with therapist.
- focusing on pitch causes voice strain and ends up lowering pitch
- work on exercise to tune the voice as an instrument
- work on listening to voice so you can hear the differences (ie when matching pitch guys will often match 1 octave lower but not be able to tell the difference immediately)
- Work on moving from chest register to head register (did giggling excercise and could feel voice coming from back of mouth rather than throat. Looks into singers training their "register break" and aim your voice at the low end of upper register so that intonation has somewhere to go.
- Work on Intonation (vary pitch up and down in the same sentence and even word) let you voice express more feeling and emotion.
- Do these and average pitch will increase anyway.
- Stress will lower pitch.
- Don't smoke
Overall was a great talk and makes me want to learn more but the main point I took is that voice is an instrument and you can make it do what you want through training and practice.
