Hi everybody! I'm posting a current sample of my voice to see if you all have any comments. This is the result of about 6 months of voice therapy, then another 2 months of practicing without a coach.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0gTXVsKUygW

(I am *not* going to record this again. I *will* let the awkward ending stand. This. I. Vow.)

Meghan, I'm no pro at this, but the voice sounds feminine and pleasant to me.  I'd say your efforts have paid off nicely.

The voice is pretty good. The pitch is in the feminine range and there is a reasonable amount of inflection and I suspect that will improve as you use the voice more. The one issues is that once in a while you drop a bit low. I suspect most untrained people would never pick up on it so it wouldn't out you as long as it doesn't happen much in a conversation. In any case, the voice is ready for daily use if you want to.

Thank you, Michelle and Dena. I hear the bits where I go too low. I'm supposed to bottom out at about 150Hz, but... yeah. I guess it's something to work on!

Moving toward using it 100% of the time... soon, I hope. Work is the issue right now. I'm coming out there very slowly.

You've got down what I think is the hardest thing to do -- establishing the proper timbre and resonance.  Bravo!  Sometimes you resonate up in the 2K+ range, which is lovely.  Especially when you smile.

Your base pitch is still a bit low -- I think your baseline is around 175Hz, or F3 (it's kind of hard to tell with the background hum, which would be easy to noise reduce with Audacity) which is just a note above that 160Hz mark that seems to be the other tipping point as far as how voice gets gendered.  As Dena points out, you sometimes let it drop to lower levels.  I'd also say that hitting some even higher notes for inflection would help as well. 

I wonder if it would help to do some "tightening" exercises, like, I find if I "contract" or "flex" my tongue a bit (just engaging that muscle in a constant sort of way) it helps to cut off some of the lower registers.  Just underneath the tongue, between it and the larynx at the front of the throat, seem to be some other slight muscles that, when engaged, lead to naturally higher pitches all around. 

When I was developing my voice, I let it creep into work.  "What's up with your voice?" I was asked.  "Getting over a case of laryngitis," I'd say.  Eventually they stopped asking.  (And then eventually I quit and got a new job.) 

Wow, Sophia! That's great feedback, thanks! I'll try those exercises. My iPad tells me I'm usually between 185 and 200 average, but when I get flat (inflectionally speaking) that can drag it down a bunch.

What were you using to measure resonance? I'm doing well to measure average pitch.

I used the Audio Spectrum Monitor app for resonance -- it can flash harmonic frequencies.

By "baseline" pitch I don't mean average -- I'm probably misusing the term.  I mean where your voice naturally settles.  Like where you go "and, um" towards the end, and words like "time" and "month".  That's between 175 and 196 -- between F3 and G3.  To my ear, trying to match your pitch on my own, it's closer to F3.  Looking more closely at the software, it's reading closer to G3, so I'm probably tone deaf!  Sorry about that.

Your inflection usually hits around B3 -- 246, and rarely ticks C4 and D4 (266 and 277).  But I'm also seeing you drop to around E2 (82Hz) when you fry your voice.  Don't fry your voice so much! 



Her fry is at F3.  That's where her voice regularly bottoms out.  She also regularly inflects up to C6 (100 Hz), and there's no way in hell I can do that.  But here's a woman with a lower voice that I think can be achieved:



She too hits the deep registers when she fries her voice, and in her normal register her baseline is what, around 200?  Generally she's talking between E3 and F4, a little more than an octave, and her voice is unmistakably female.  But there's so much more range and dynamicism in her speech, and that's something we can definitely pull off -- not the soprano notes (she hits C5 523hz easily) so much as avoiding that monotone at the E3-F3 range.  If most of your notes are E3-F3, your voice is going to sound lower overall than if you're getting half of your notes above C4. 

(BTW, there's some interesting analysis out there regarding why younger women might be frying their voices -- it's definitely a thing in the sub-25 age group -- so it's obviously not something we shouldn't ever do, but rather we should be conscious of when we're doing it.  It should be purposeful, as opposed to something that's slipped into when we're tired and inattentive.)

Anyways, you're so, so close.  Bump that pitch up a couple notes all around (there's a reason A3 is bandied about as where you want to settle), limit your fry, and you should be golden. 

Thanks again, Sophia! I didn't realize that's what people mean by "vocal fry." I think I use it as a crutch sometimes, because it sounds feminine to me. This whole thing is quite a process.