I get compliments all the time from trans women about my voice, and they always ask me how I did it.
The reason it was easy for me is because I've been SINGING FALSETTO for a long time.
If you don't know what this is think Bee Gees Saturday Night Fever.
When you get that down, apply it to your normal voice, and begin the process of strengthening those vocal chords so you can do louder and longer!
Hope this helps someone [emoji1]

Hi! I have been trying to work on my voice lately to make it higher and more feminine sounding. I know I don't have to try and achieve that voice, but I personally would like to. So when training is it good to just talk and sing sing at a very high pitch? I Also don't know how to apply it to my voice. Also I'm a terrible singer. Is there a secret to getting this "girl" voice

The trick is to use what is called the head voice in singing. To do this, you need to tighten up the muscles between the larynx and the jaw. You can feel these muscles when you  swallow by putting your hand gently on you upper neck. When you tighten these muscle, you will feel your larynx move up.  Singing or talking, anything that trains you to make this an automatic reaction when you speak will lock the voice in. I have been doing it for so many years that I have to make a determined effort to drop out of this range into my lower range.

I'm sorry to disagree, but I'm receiving voice therapy myself and a falsetto voice is exactly what you want to avoid. I'd be kicked out of voice therapy if I even tried falsetto. It's damaging to your vocal chords, sounds fake, a falsetto voice has very little range and even less volume. It will make you less passable, not more. What you shoulf find out first is the range of your normal voice (I have a reach of three octaves, which is average) and accustom your voice to express itself in its highest octave.  Talking in falsetto will in the end even damage your vocal chords, because of the strain you put on them.

Quote from: Dena on October 15, 2016, 08:18:46 PM
The trick is to use what is called the head voice in singing. To do this, you need to tighten up the muscles between the larynx and the jaw. You can feel these muscles when you  swallow by putting your hand gently on you upper neck. When you tighten these muscle, you will feel your larynx move up.  Singing or talking, anything that trains you to make this an automatic reaction when you speak will lock the voice in. I have been doing it for so many years that I have to make a determined effort to drop out of this range into my lower range.

Dena, what you are describing works for me quite well.  I have been practicing this method for over a year.  The trick is to get it to 'lock in', as you say.  I still need conscious awareness of how I'm talking to maintain my female voice.  Lapses occur mainly at home or in longer talking sessions with friends.  In the company of strangers out in public, I do it without really thinking about it.  Curious.

Quote from: Clara Kay on October 16, 2016, 10:09:28 AM
Dena, what you are describing works for me quite well.  I have been practicing this method for over a year.  The trick is to get it to 'lock in', as you say.  I still need conscious awareness of how I'm talking to maintain my female voice.  Lapses occur mainly at home or in longer talking sessions with friends.  In the company of strangers out in public, I do it without really thinking about it.  Curious.

Ditto that. Thank you Dena, that was a better way of describing it[emoji4]

Quote from: Naomi71 on October 16, 2016, 01:18:15 AM
I'm sorry to disagree, but I'm receiving voice therapy myself and a falsetto voice is exactly what you want to avoid. I'd be kicked out of voice therapy if I even tried falsetto. It's damaging to your vocal chords, sounds fake, a falsetto voice has very little range and even less volume. It will make you less passable, not more. What you shoulf find out first is the range of your normal voice (I have a reach of three octaves, which is average) and accustom your voice to express itself in its highest octave.  Talking in falsetto will in the end even damage your vocal chords, because of the strain you put on them.

Naomi, sounds like you have a different teqhnique. Would you like to share?

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According to my therapist my voice should be in the F3 area of the scale, at 185 or so hertz. There are many guitar tuners that will monitor your pitch, to add to your cell phone. Many are free. This will help you zero in on your frequency so that when you talk you keep a steady pitch. Once you find your pitch it becomes easier to recognize when you are too low or too high. But it does not mean you do not have to practice for hours for multiple months to achieve the perfect voice.

I was fortunate to have voice  therapy for 1.5 years before surgery. Anyone who had professional voice therapy learns to use the echo chambers in your head versus deep voiced males who use their diaphram.

The key is to keep your voice sounds above the neck. Then there are erercises to teach you to make your head the voice chamber. Some erercises are use to make you feel the vibrations in yoir head, words with m in it are used , e.g moons. Say moons and feel the vibrations at the nostril. Later when you can keep the voice above the throat and can feel the vibrations in your head you then work on pishing the sound to the front of the mouth. Females use their mouths more ... try making O shapes with your mouth and pushing your tongue to the top front teeth.

The key is not to stress your voice, nothing wrong with playing with a falcetto voice, experiment with mickey mouse voice but dont stress. In the end after much practice you will learn to use the head as the echo chamber and push the voice to the front of your mouth and open you mouth more in the O shape.

This should be natural,  it can be tiring at first. Plus stand up when you are practising, if flem builds up try pineapple juice.

We all will have a voice comfort zone, mine varies from 190 to 223 hz as an average. The most difficult to keep a high voice is when you speak softly, its easier to speak in a high tone with a louder voice. Finally female voice pitch and tone varies alot as we speak,like singing. Experiment use your voice and have fun.

Good info warlockmaker! I disagree with the last thing you said though, it's way harder for me to shout in my female voice. Maybe I need to practice more. Definitely some useful things to try, thanks!

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I had professional voice therapy too, and I agree with everything warlockmaker wrote.  Especially the parts about using the echo chambers in your head and also the part about volume/loudness.  Great post!

Quote from: Naomi71 on October 16, 2016, 01:18:15 AM
I'm sorry to disagree, but I'm receiving voice therapy myself and a falsetto voice is exactly what you want to avoid. I'd be kicked out of voice therapy if I even tried falsetto. It's damaging to your vocal chords, sounds fake, a falsetto voice has very little range and even less volume. It will make you less passable, not more. What you shoulf find out first is the range of your normal voice (I have a reach of three octaves, which is average) and accustom your voice to express itself in its highest octave.  Talking in falsetto will in the end even damage your vocal chords, because of the strain you put on them.

I can confirm this as well. I received voice training from a professional who specializes in voice feminization. You want to avoid falsetto at all costs.

This is an interesting thread.  Achieving a feminine voice is so important for passing.  There are so many factors that go into determining one's chances of success.  Motivation and persistence are at the top of the list.  So many girls give up on improving their voice.  It's hard to do.  It's rather unusual to find a trans woman who has a convincingly female voice. 

I think that voice coaching is useful.  Emily certainly has benefited from her coaching.  Learning to raise the pitch of your voice is important depending on where you are starting from, and learning the feminine style of talking is even more important, imo.  That's where a lot of girls come up short, and the older you are the harder it is to accomplish.  It has similarities to learning to speak a foreign language with a proper accent.  Some people have the natural ability to mimic other's speech patterns while others do not.  The former will be able to apply that ability to produce female sounding speech and will be able to get by even if they can't raise their natural pitch into the female range. 

The only voice training I've had is the Andrea James "Finding Your Female Voice" course, which I now understand is available free on the internet.  It's no substitute for a personal voice coach, but it does provide fundamental principles that are essential if you want to transform your speaking voice.  What makes a personal voice coach worth the extra hourly fee beyond understanding the basic principles is the immediate feedback she gives to correct mistakes and help establish good habits.

But even if you learn all the techniques and are able to replicate female speech rhythms and nuance, it still comes down to applying it every day in every situation until it becomes ingrained.  That's where the real challenge is.  Like learning any other complex skill it takes years to master it. 

Quote from: Sandboxed on October 17, 2016, 05:53:50 PMNaomi, sounds like you have a different teqhnique. Would you like to share?

I'm Dutch, so the excercises I get are in Dutch as well, if they aren't just sounds. One of the things I have to do is  zzzzzz or vvvvv sounds from my mid range (from my chest) up until falsetto and vice versa, in order to get used of the range in which I express myself passably feminine, which is already there. My voice already went up although people still recognise it as authentically mine, but are genuinely shocked when I use my old male voice (I sometimes do that for fun). I also practice a lot of different vowel/ consonant combinations like "m-oo-m, m-o-m, m-u-m" or "tippe tappe tippe tappe tip tap top"  which I then have to speed up, try to be mindful of the way I express certain  words I often use (like "yes", "no" and "uhm"), read long lists of dutch words in which I have to go high with the vowels and recently started with sound combinations like "pssst, ssst, kssst, ksss and slightly open my mouth after I said those words, so I learn how to use my diaphragm.

Recently I was "promoted" to reading poetry rather than jibberish, which I then have to read aloud as dramatically as possible, to work on my intonation as well. The standard poems my voice therapist gave me to read were child verses and started boring me rather quickly (I'm a literary scientist), so I compiled my own list of actual poetry  dealing with transitioning in some way and am presently reading Rilke's "Birth of Venus". Here's the English translation of that poem, but I read it in Dutch and German:

Well I've now learned that falsetto is bad. I guess even though it helped me early on, I shouldn't be giving advice.

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Sandboxed, CandyFLA (who formerly had great voice advice on Youtube) also started in falsetto, so don't feel bad. She had an amazing voice. Eventually it's good to bring the resonance back into "head voice" which still feels like it's up and forward like falsetto, but stronger.

One exercise I've seen for getting that "head voice" is to hum... feel where the vibration is happening... and try to make sure it's up front of your mouth, in your lips and palate near the teeth. (At least that's where it is for me!) Then you can try singing notes with that same mouth/throat shape and see if the resonance is more feminine.

I was thinking that falsetto voice sounds different depending on the person, so for some people doing falsetto could sound perfectly fine. It's all too easy to generalize our experiences but it's important to understand that not everyone is the same. For example, when I had my nose reconstructed, my surgeon said that what should've been an easy job was made more difficult because my skin isn't as stretchy as the majority of clients he has worked with.

Quote from: Clara Kay on October 18, 2016, 09:20:53 AM
This is an interesting thread.  Achieving a feminine voice is so important for passing.  There are so many factors that go into determining one's chances of success.  Motivation and persistence are at the top of the list.  So many girls give up on improving their voice.  It's hard to do.  It's rather unusual to find a trans woman who has a convincingly female voice. 

I think that voice coaching is useful.  Emily certainly has benefited from her coaching.  Learning to raise the pitch of your voice is important depending on where you are starting from, and learning the feminine style of talking is even more important, imo.  That's where a lot of girls come up short, and the older you are the harder it is to accomplish.  It has similarities to learning to speak a foreign language with a proper accent.  Some people have the natural ability to mimic other's speech patterns while others do not.  The former will be able to apply that ability to produce female sounding speech and will be able to get by even if they can't raise their natural pitch into the female range. 

The only voice training I've had is the Andrea James "Finding Your Female Voice" course, which I now understand is available free on the internet.  It's no substitute for a personal voice coach, but it does provide fundamental principles that are essential if you want to transform your speaking voice.  What makes a personal voice coach worth the extra hourly fee beyond understanding the basic principles is the immediate feedback she gives to correct mistakes and help establish good habits.

But even if you learn all the techniques and are able to replicate female speech rhythms and nuance, it still comes down to applying it every day in every situation until it becomes ingrained.  That's where the real challenge is.  Like learning any other complex skill it takes years to master it.

I too have found a training course that is practical and easy to follow. In the practice session there are sensors that help you maintain Pitch, 123 count, diaphragmatic breathing, simple phrases. The videos are called Exceptional Voice App or EVA and is mentored by Kathe Perez.

I've been listening to the Andrea James recordings and a few others on YouTube. Right now I'm trying to concentrate on holding my larynx up and back. Sometimes after holding those muscles for a while they seem like they will stay in place when talking. From using a voice app on my phone just holding the larynx higher pushes the pitch up some without adding any other technique to it yet. A few times I've noticed my voice crack! I'd love it to just find the muscle memory to stay higher without thinking about it. My natural relaxed larynx voice is right around C3 with little inflection. So aside from just giving my speech more emotion I have near an octave to go.
On the negative side I have lifelong sinus cavity congestion caused by a pretty severely deviated septum so getting real head resonances doesn't happen. I'm thinking my next step before HRT is to get my nose repaired. I wonder if I can get a doctor to give it a more feminine look while there're already in there cutting? Hoping so.

I went to a reconstructive plastic surgeon for my nose and explained that I was transsexual. I told him I wanted a nose that fit my face but would work for either gender. He added that my passages were block and needed to be opened up. After the swelling went down, I really liked the external appearance and I can walk fast and still breath through my nose, something I couldn't do before. If the doctor is unable to do both, you need to keep looking as there should be no need for two surgeries.

The muscle memory will happen over time but it takes constant use to do it. I have been using the trained voice for so long I have forgotten how to use the old voice and must force my self to relax if I want to use the chest voice. With a starting point of C3, you should be able to comfortably produce a feminine voice.

Interesting. It took me a while to get mine down, but I didn't have voice therapy. Ultimately I found the pitch mattered very little. My girl voice is basically the same pitch as my guy one. The difference is instead of having that thick chest sound surrounding it, I have a softer head voice over it. I don't know how to describe it. It's sort of like a higher pitch that's on top of my normal lower pitch. That combined with changing how I speak works, made the biggest difference. If I try to do a higher pitch, it sounds fake and gives me weird looks.

And like others stated, once that clicked into place, I started having to really work to get back to the guy voice. I don't remember the last time I used the guy voice now though. Not sure if I could do it fully anymore.