Hi everyone,

I've been on hormones for quite a few months now, and although I have steadily been making changes to my outward appearance (growing out hair, clothes, piercings, gradually introducing makeup on most days), I still don't feel ready to give full time a go, mostly because of my voice.

Ever since coming out to myself in late 2015 I have been doing a sort of self taught voice training, but that was really doomed from the start, so I have been looking into professional speech therapy to feminize my voice, and I was wondering if anyone here had personal experience of what it was like and how effective it was?

I have heard some before and after voice samples, and frankly they sound like miracles to me, but I imagine those are probably from their best cases. I myself have a horrible deep burbly voice, so I am concerned about how effective it would be.

Lily

I'm 3 lessons in with a therapist who thinks I should be fine with 5 or 6 so fingers crossed! Personally, I don't understand why so many are keen to avoid paying for help with such an important element of being trans.

The problem with all the free content is that, as a raw beginner, you either won't be aware of errors/poor technique or you will be but unsure how to correct. As a guitar teacher, I know just how beneficial it is to have an expert teaching you and watching you, ensuring you maintain correct posture and highlighting issues. Then, once you get a handle on things you can then become more self-taught.

And now, as a student, I am proving this to be true. Though I don't yet sound female I have no problem talking in a much higher register, talking from my palette, and drawing my larynx up. In contrast, I was unable to draw up the larynx when following the free content and all attempts were uncomfortable and straining. Better yet, there are times when I thought I was doing okay but my therapist corrected me and prevented me from going down a slippery slope.

I say give it a go even for just a few lessons so that you can create a base from which to work and develop from.

I've jumped into voice lessons as one of my first steps toward transition because at the time it was something g I knew I could work on slowly and my voice always caused me a lot of dysphoria. I tried diy voice training, but it became quite clear to me that I wouldn't make any progress without some help so, I stated mine in January with the Voice Lab in Chicago and my experience has been nothing short of wonderful. Here I am barely 3 months & 8-10 lessons later and my voice has improved remarkably.

Side note - I've always felt like my voice was very deep but quickly learned that the way I was hearing myself was largely due to my dysphoria manifesting.

I am on my third  lesson and similar to Vicky in the respect she thinks about 5-6 sessions and I should have all the information I need to be able to produce an authentic voice pitched about 180 which is on the lower end of the female range but well within it...I have a heap of exercises I am doing on a daily basis and making fairly good progress...I have heard of people actually doing this in about 6 months which I can imagine

Liz

Hi!  I did an initial hour in-office with a speech therapist, with several 30 minute followups on a live video link.  It went very well, I think.  (I plan on uploading some stuff on vocaroo for critique here.)

I had practiced for about 3 months beforehand using SingScope on an iPhone and the method Dena has mentioned here several times to 'tighten' the throat and move from the chest voice to a head voice.  Once I was able to hold my speech in the A3-C4 range for several minutes, although with poor volume, I sought out a speech therapist through the Kaiser Northern California Multi-Specialty Transitions center.

Prior to my initial visit I was off dairy products for a few days, and didn't eat anything (but clear liquids) for several hours beforehand.  A special camera and stroboscope was used to photograph my larynx and vocal folds in operation, with me trying to sing some notes with this hardware poking me!

Then we moved to Linda's office, where I read some passages and she evaluated my vocal spectrum.  She was very happy with the pitch, so we moved right into breath control and prosody, the female singsong speech style in our culture.  I recited a number of sentences with direction on emotional content, posture, head and mouth position.  I got homework!

I spend the next several weeks reading aloud from Aesop's Fables, and speaking some of the longer passages 'spoken' by Hermione in the Harry Potter novels.  I tried to use everything in conversations with other women.  I tried to sing alto in church! (Ouch.)  Each video session Linda engaged me in conversation and analysed my speech.  I got fresh exercises.

I just "graduated" 6 whole days ago, and I do believe it worked.  I had a blast doing it!  Really!  It was both a lot of work, and fun.

Prosody...can never think of the word...next lesson is going to be about this, as I have the pitch which for me is f3

I very much recommend a speech therapist. I did the self training for 11 months and just could not get it. I could sound ok in practice but in real life it just didn't work.
I did 2 personal lessons with the Voice Lab in Chicago and have been doing a one hour session once a week with them over the web since late December.

I am just now getting to where my voice works in most all settings. I was able to sound good during lessons and practice sessions early on. Conversations with my friends took a bit longer. Doing presentations in front of large groups of males is proving to be the last big challenge.

The feed back you get from a professional is essential. On my own I could not figure out why I had so much trouble with my voice at work or in the presentations. By recording myself in different settings my speech therapist was able to give me specific things to work on. I does take time but the results are well worth it.

I have been teaching technical classes for the last 6 days and trying to apply everything she has taught me. On the recording of the last two classes my voice finally sounds feminine.
It sometimes seemed like it was taking forever but it's really only been 4 months. Actually in the big picture one of the shortest time things I've done. (Discounting the 11 months wasted on self teaching)

Prosodoy - time for a dictionary!

I have two current concerns that you may be able to help with:

1) my therapist and girls on the web all say women talk in a sing-song manner whilst men are more monotonic. The thing is, I don't notice any more inflection and pitching. My therapist uses unfair examples:

waitress: hi, my name's Mandy, would you like to order a drink?
man: I'm going to bed.

I understand she's trying to make a distinction by using such exaggerated and juxtaposed examples but it jars me because women can say 'I'm going to bed' in a similarly monotonic way and a waiter (think TGI's) can be just as pitchy and bubbly as a female waiter. When I listen to the girls talk at work I don't notice much more sing-song than guys talking and I'm struggling to accept/grasp the notion that women are more varied in their pitch.


2) When I am doing my exercise - currently on 3-5 word sentence - I can maintain timbre and quality if I stay monotonic (which, ironically, contradicts the teachings above) or if I go up at the end of a sentence, as though asking a question, but if I drop down at the end - as we are naturally inclined to do - then I find resonance creeps in and I go quite male sounding. This happens with even the slightest drop in pitch even though women will vary their pitch much more widely and it's frustrating.

Also, it doesn't help that Scarlett Johansson sounds delightfully sexy and feminine despite having a very deep and husky voice.

Quote from: vicki_sixx on April 19, 2017, 03:08:55 AM
Prosodoy - time for a dictionary!

I have two current concerns that you may be able to help with:

1) my therapist and girls on the web all say women talk in a sing-song manner whilst men are more monotonic. The thing is, I don't notice any more inflection and pitching. My therapist uses unfair examples:

waitress: hi, my name's Mandy, would you like to order a drink?
man: I'm going to bed.

I understand she's trying to make a distinction by using such exaggerated and juxtaposed examples but it jars me because women can say 'I'm going to bed' in a similarly monotonic way and a waiter (think TGI's) can be just as pitchy and bubbly as a female waiter. When I listen to the girls talk at work I don't notice much more sing-song than guys talking and I'm struggling to accept/grasp the notion that women are more varied in their pitch.


2) When I am doing my exercise - currently on 3-5 word sentence - I can maintain timbre and quality if I stay monotonic (which, ironically, contradicts the teachings above) or if I go up at the end of a sentence, as though asking a question, but if I drop down at the end - as we are naturally inclined to do - then I find resonance creeps in and I go quite male sounding. This happens with even the slightest drop in pitch even though women will vary their pitch much more widely and it's frustrating.

Also, it doesn't help that Scarlett Johansson sounds delightfully sexy and feminine despite having a very deep and husky voice.

I understand what you mean...my therapist talked to me about the same thing. My practice is in a sing songy kind of way but we are concentrating on Pitch at the moment rather than prosody...Next week we will. I was listening to my partner trying to pick up the kind of inflections and rises your and my therapist talk about and I didn't really hear it. I do know that when my voice gets ragged the pitch will instantly drop by about half.

Liz

It's tricky.  I found two 'tells' in speech patterns among all the folks I paid really close attention to (sneakily running SingScope on my phone during meetings!).

Men tend to drop pitch every few words, at the end of a phrase, or before pausing for a breath.  Women hold a flat pitch (monotone) or a slightly rising pitch after phrases.

In breathing, women tend to continually exhale through an entire phrase or even statement.  Men tend to stop exhaling between phrases or even words. 

Speaking in didactic mode, giving a lecture or presentation, it is really easy to slip into male speech patterns.  That's why I was practicing reading Aesop's Fables and those speeches Hermione gives in the Harry Potter novels.  I could compare the latter to audiobook passages, as well, which is handy.

The 'pitchy and bubbly' phrasing sounds a bit goofy to ourselves, but it tends to read more feminine than monotone speech.  A small error while speaking in a monotone instantly reads as male, while the 'pitchy and bubbly' style overwhelms errors with feminine cues.

Women may shift the pitch several times in the same word. Men remain monotone but may shift the volume to emphasize words. This isn't always true as we had a member who went for voice surgery and her first words were nearly perfectly feminine. I ask about it and she put her pre surgical voice up and the feminine speech pattern was there but the voice was low enough that it gendered male. It was one of the very few exceptions where a post surgical voice didn't require therapy to take the edges off.

Hey,

I don't want to detract from the conversation going on, but I feel a little bit confused about the timescale for therapy. How often do the appointments tend to be, or is that going to be down to the whims of the therapist?

Quote from: Dena on April 19, 2017, 03:44:54 PM
Women may shift the pitch several times in the same word. Men remain monotone but may shift the volume

This is what I'm having trouble with because I can't say I recognise this.I hear some men being monotonic and some not just like I hear some women being monotonic and some not. They're all pretty much of a muchness to me.

Quote from: RenegadeGirl on April 19, 2017, 04:18:14 PM
How often do the appointments tend to be, or is that going to be down to the whims of the therapist?

Any good therapist will leave it to you to drive the appointments because it's you who's making, or not making, progress. Mine advice me to book in when I'm ready. My first second appointment was after two weeks, my third after three weeks and my fourth will be after five weeks. She doesn't want to take money of me unless I'm ready.

To answer your earlier question about how effective it is, surely you have heard trans-women with exceptionally feminine voices?  They didn't all have surgery and there's plenty of girls on YouTube  Who didn't have surgery either so it does work though, as with anything, the effectiveness depends on the individual - how much practice they put into it, how good that practice is, whether they grasp the concepts etc - which is why I'm concerned that I'm not hearing the fluctuations and differences in male and female voices that we are talking about. It's even more frustrating because as.a guitar teacher with a very good ear, I'm on the ball when it comes to recognising quality in my voice and hearing when it goes even slightly off track so I should not have a problem hearing the quality in others.

Yes speech therapy is so important. the girls that can figure it out on their own: that's great.

I did 6 months of voice therapy for the first 6 months of my transition. My life and transition would never have been the same without it. I can't stress that enough.

7 years later, my voice is still pretty good. I find it drops occasionally but never anywhere close to male levels.

This is a rainbow reading from my first ever voice therapy appointment before doing any work : https://clyp.it/zpvaodxg
This is a rainbow reading from last August: https://clyp.it/t3adxcdv

Wow Debra  I love how your voice sounds...that is exactly what I am looking to do...your voice sounds authentic and definitely female...I am still working on mine with a professional...what kind of practice regime did you do to achieve that? I practice about 1-2 times a day everyday but not allowed to do any more than 4 per day.

Liz

Superb work Debra!

Quote from: ElizabethK on April 19, 2017, 10:51:35 PM
Wow Debra  I love how your voice sounds...that is exactly what I am looking to do...your voice sounds authentic and definitely female...I am still working on mine with a professional...what kind of practice regime did you do to achieve that? I practice about 1-2 times a day everyday but not allowed to do any more than 4 per day.

Liz

Thanks =) I'm pretty happy with it nowadays. During those 6 months I was constantly practicing. It was before I was even 'out' at work yet so when I started accidentally using the voice at work, I realized it was time to transition full time haha. I also found that video logging helped a lot because I could not only practice talking but HEARING the playback constantly too.

Quote from: vicki_sixx on April 20, 2017, 02:41:07 AM
Superb work Debra!

Thanks!