Quote from: Mara on December 18, 2010, 02:34:23 AM
For all of you who can't sound like a guy anymore, did you originally do a lot of conscious work to improve your female voice and concentrate on maintaining, or did it just slowly come naturally, or what?

Working on voice at all requires a lot of conscious work and a lot of work maintaining it. Once I learned where the voice had to be and what muscles were involved, I would only be able to maintain it for 5-10 minutes before my voice would tire. It was many more months of practicing until my voice was strong enough where it could be maintained for any long period of time, and now it will just stay there on its own once I've set it where it needs to be.

It's a case of muscle memory... once warmed up and held in that position, the muscles will tend to want to stay there, so it requires effort to switch back and forth. People who say they can't, *could* probably sound like a guy again with a bit of warming up and effort, but it becomes difficult... and honestly most people don't want to put that kind of effort into revisiting something they worked so hard to change. Personally, I have trouble switching if I've been in one mode or the other for more than ten minutes or so.

My bigest issue is my natural range is bass-baratone.

I am envious of you gals who cannot find your male voice easily.  I have to concentrate to talk in my falatio voice even though I have been at it on and off for a while (a year?).  Talking in a deep voice is easy (sadly).  I should get training.  Maybe one day talking in a higher pitch voice will come without effort and the effort will be to talk like a guy.

Congratulations to all of you who mastered that.  Great Job!  That gives the rest of us hope.

LOL... My attempts to talk in my man voice have been epic fail lately 

well in a cruel twist of irony I've now got a chest infection and sore throat and have what can only be described as the voice of ick and i seem to be getting imis-gendered more on the back of that.

Quote from: Helena on December 19, 2010, 04:12:28 AM
well in a cruel twist of irony I've now got a chest infection and sore throat and have what can only be described as the voice of ick and i seem to be getting imis-gendered more on the back of that.

Karma can be cruel when we get start to get confident! It has happened to all of us I'm sure. You think you have something nailed and you get a blooming great kick in the pants from Karma.

My latest was over my writing, but the principle is exactly the same... never count your chickens!

Ain't life a bitch.

PS - oh and in some other thread I was saying how where I live we never get snow... well today we are all but snowed in!

Quote from: rejennyrated on December 19, 2010, 04:27:47 AM
Karma can be cruel when we get start to get confident! It has happened to all of us I'm sure. You think you have something nailed and you get a blooming great kick in the pants from Karma.

My latest was over my writing, but the principle is exactly the same... never count your chickens!

Ain't life a bitch.

PS - oh and in some other thread I was saying how where I live we never get snow... well today we are all but snowed in!

Yeah, well it seems to be a bit better now I've got some cough medicine down me and I think forgoing the morning ciggarette helped somewhat.

I still feel like ick though. more hot toddy's I think 

yay, snow...except i think that the snow may prevent me getting home for christmas

It took me a month to get over a recent cold I had, so I feel for you.   Luckily I wasn't completely "Frogged" by the gunk in my chest/head.

Where I live, it doesn't take much snow to shut down the city.   One inch is enough to make it impossible to get up and down the hill I live on. :/   So I feel for you there, too.

But at least you get to make some snow men and women!

Okay, so I just got off the phone and wanted to share this with you.. During the past months I've been avoiding phonecalls with strangers like the plague. I honestly don't know how I managed to avoid them, but I did. I was affraid of being read as male, which I'm not. Today I just had to make a phone call, so I did. While I was on hold, I was trying to decide if I would be using my male voice (and get depressed) or my female voice (and would probable get depressed too because it would most likely fail). I actually thought that I had a choice in which voice to use... By the time my call was finally answered I was almost having a panic attack because of too much thinking and worrying.. I started to speak, still not sure which voice would come out, and then found out that I was only able to use my female voice. I honestly think that I wouldn't have been able to use my male voice if I wanted to. It's like that voice is sort of gone.

Now I may or may not have sounded rediculous, but one way or another it 'worked'. I have no idea if the guy on the phone interpreted me as female or male, but by using my female voice it felt like I was being loyal to myself. That made me feel good and didn't leave me depressed at all as I initially thought it would. The guy on the phone needed my address so that he could send me some form, and I am very curious if the enveloppe will mention a gender... When he asked for my name and address I deliberately did not give him my first name, I just said - R. Last Name -

Should the enveloppe say Mr., well, then I know I have work to do, lol. At this point I'm just happy that the voice I am using now is at least not my male voice as I always knew it.

Now that it seems like I don't have a choice in the matter anymore, about which voice to use, I guess it is time to find out if I sound rediculous using my female voice or not. I'm not sure yet how I can find out about that. Does anyone have any suggestions? I don't think it's a good idea to ask family and friends about their opinion, because their interpretation of me seems to be totally different from what most strangers see (and hear?) anyway.

Actually depending on the source of the incoming call that they made you probably CAN'T now read anything into the gender on the envelope because if you have already had contact with this organisation they will have a record of that and your assumed gender at the time of the first contact will most likely be shown there.

Alternatively if the lead came via some other organistaion likewise they will have been told to expect either a male customer or female. Either way you may well get a MR purely on the basis that the database that they were working from said that this was what you are.

I would say you should always give your preferred gender and title. I always say "and it's Jenny xxx, and I'm Ms please - not Miss or Mrs" You'll soon know if the voice is ok anyway because if it is they won't query you.

Quote from: Mara on December 18, 2010, 02:34:23 AM
For all of you who can't sound like a guy anymore, did you originally do a lot of conscious work to improve your female voice and concentrate on maintaining, or did it just slowly come naturally, or what?

My voice is still in the mid to high male range, but it used to be really deep.  I'm surprised only one person seems to have noticed that my voice has changed.  I used to surprise people on occasion because nobody really expected some 105-pound dude to have such a deep voice.  But now I can't get anywhere near as deep as I used to, regardless of how much I try to force it.  A month or two ago I was trying to emulate some TV character who had a deep voice, and I sounded really weak.

The method I used to alter the voice is very difficult.  I find a song that is in a register I can sing in.  But I sing it in the highest octave I can manage without my voice breaking.  If my voice changes and I can no longer sing the song properly, I will switch to a different song.  I used to spend a lot of time doing this.  It makes your voice REALLY sore.

It was worth it, though.  I hated my old voice more than anything.  At least now it sounds somewhat decent, and I don't sound like some demon from a really bad horror film.  The only downside is that I can no longer do my Clint Eastwood impression.  It was a small price to pay.

Quote from: rejennyrated on December 20, 2010, 08:14:58 AM
Actually depending on the source of the incoming call that they made you probably CAN'T now read anything into the gender on the envelope because if you have already had contact with this organisation they will have a record of that and your assumed gender at the time of the first contact will most likely be shown there.

Alternatively if the lead came via some other organistaion likewise they will have been told to expect either a male customer or female. Either way you may well get a MR purely on the basis that the database that they were working from said that this was what you are.

I would say you should always give your preferred gender and title. I always say "and it's Jenny xxx, and I'm Ms please - not Miss or Mrs" You'll soon know if the voice is ok anyway because if it is they won't query you.

I'm not sure if I ever had contact with this organisation before. I may have, so they may have a record. Thanks Jenny for pointing that out because I hadn't thought of that at all. At least now when I receive a MR from them I know that it doesn't have to be because of my voice necessarily.

I'll start with giving my preferred gender and title as soon as I have sent out the letters about pronouns etc. to all organisations that have a record of me. I haven't felt ready for that, but I think I am ready for it now. It will make a nice task for january

I had an interesting phone call last week.  My guy voice used to be kind of borderline androgynous, but now it's apparently all female.  Passing when I wasn't expecting to made it kind of awkward setting up my eye doctor appointment as a guy, but it was funny enough that I figure I should share

Me: Hi, I'd like to set up an appointment with Dr. xxxxx
Receptionist: Name?
Me: <last name>
Her: <sister's name>?
Me: No... (said more masculine, slightly confused at this point)
Her: <mother's name>?
Me: No, <male name>
Her: I'm sorry, we don't have a <female name that sounds like male name> in our system.  I'm going to find out why.
Me: No no, <male name, said very very clearly>
Her: Oh.... well can you ask <male name> if they would like an appointment today?  We have a 3:15, a 3:45, and a 4:45 open.

Quote from: Kieri on December 20, 2010, 05:01:49 PM
I had an interesting phone call last week.  My guy voice used to be kind of borderline androgynous, but now it's apparently all female.  Passing when I wasn't expecting to made it kind of awkward setting up my eye doctor appointment as a guy, but it was funny enough that I figure I should share

Me: Hi, I'd like to set up an appointment with Dr. xxxxx
Receptionist: Name?
Me: <last name>
Her: <sister's name>?
Me: No... (said more masculine, slightly confused at this point)
Her: <mother's name>?
Me: No, <male name>
Her: I'm sorry, we don't have a <female name that sounds like male name> in our system.  I'm going to find out why.
Me: No no, <male name, said very very clearly>
Her: Oh.... well can you ask <male name> if they would like an appointment today?  We have a 3:15, a 3:45, and a 4:45 open.

When you try to sound female, they speak to you as male.  But when you aren't trying they always hear female.  *palmslap*

Quote from: Janet Lynn on December 20, 2010, 05:24:31 PM
When you try to sound female, they speak to you as male.  But when you aren't trying they always hear female.  *palmslap*

I've notice this also... Or if you try to sound male they think your a woman trying to sound like Mr.You

"Oh, is this Mrs.You?"

This can be both a score and a frustration at the same time... Especially if they will only speak to Mr.You

Quote from: Janet Lynn on December 20, 2010, 05:24:31 PM
When you try to sound female, they speak to you as male.  But when you aren't trying they always hear female.  *palmslap*

Well, not really with me.  When I try to sound female I sound female, but when I'm not trying I'm androgynous and could get read either way, but apparently leaning more toward female.  All this of course depends on whether or not they can see me and how I'm dressed.

I was interested in the thread, and I was speaking to a friend on the phone today, so I decided to record 10 of the 15 minutes conversation. Listening to my 'male' voice, wow, does it ever sound off, and I'm not quite sure how to describe it; It sounds so androgynous. The last time that I had heard my 'male' voice in recorded form, was in August, and I could tell my voice had changed.

Quote from: Kieri on December 20, 2010, 05:45:11 PM
Well, not really with me.  When I try to sound female I sound female, but when I'm not trying I'm androgynous and could get read either way, but apparently leaning more toward female.  All this of course depends on whether or not they can see me and how I'm dressed.

Same with me.

Although, sometimes even how you're dressed doesn't matter either. When I go out to the store or whatever, sometimes I don't spend much time getting ready, and just throw on some jeans and a t-shirt or whatever, and I don't really try with my voice because I think I don't pass anyway... and I'll still be called ma'am. Sometimes I think "These people MUST be blind AND deaf!" Lol...

I can drop my voice but I can't keep it there.  I remember I tried doing it at work once.  I wanted to freak out a customer.  So I started out with, "Hi, how can I help you," in my male voice.  And as I took the customer through his order my voice kept getting higher and higher until it was back to normal.  At the end of it all he said, "Thank you, miss." 

I'll do it every once in a while to my friends who will tell me, "Please don't do that.  That voice is so creepy!"

Okay, I have to chime in here.

A couple of years ago, when I talked on the phone with the bank, I already was using my female name.  I spoke in mostly my male voice but gave my female name.  I do not know if I tried to use my female voice but failed or just used my male voice.  In any event, I gave my name and the person on the phone refused to believe that I was me even after I gave all the answers.  I was transfered to the manager, who also refused to believe that I was a female and thought that I was impersonating the real me.  Thankfully, the bank did not close my account or do anything bad, but that phone call was a total waste, very annoying.

Today, I can pass on the phone the vast majority of the time now.  I still get excited every time that I hear "ma'am" and "Ms."   I cannot tell all of you how long I waited to hear that from people and not "sir" and male everything.  Sometimes I still say "Yippee!" afterwards.

My point is that just because you give your name as a female name does not automatically mean that you get treated that way.  The voice has to match or at least get interpreted that as a female.