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accidentally stumbled upon new voice. is it better than my old one?

Started by Eve of chaos, November 20, 2011, 01:05:39 AM

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Eve of chaos

so I've been using a female voice that well i dont think was too good but all my friends said it was fine. i recorded it today so run by an online friend of mine who is also trans to get her opinion.

I'm going to skype chat with someone soon who doesn't know I'm trans but suspects it. I see it as the perfect opportunity to test my voice. hes seen pictures and the video of me playing guitar. I think the voice will sway him one way or the other, i want it to be female.

anyway while driving home from work I was practicing my voice singing to songs like always, then "Hotel california" came up on the playlist, sure its a guy singing but it doenst matter haha. anyway I stumbled upon a new place with my voice by accident, and for some reason it feels like its where its supposed to be rather then where I have been doing it. once I get it to that spot it just stays without any effort, although  it sounds really funky. like terribly, it feels better than ti actually sounds. it makes me cringe when i actually hear it, so if its where i need to be it needs a lot of work

I recorded this one as well just now and I want opinions on which one is better, the both need work but I would like to know which one I should focus on working on so I can use the best on on skype chat.

btw idk what I'm talking about, i had no idea what to say mostly just rambled. what I'm saying might be more embarrassing tahn my actual voice

voice 1
untitled.wav
voice 2
untitled2.wav

Beep

Definitely stop trying to use the first one, especially if it feels unnatural and forced. It sounds like you're just talking while plugging your sinuses. Talking should be one of the most natural things you do.
Now your second sample, although it sounds horrible now, I believe you may have been lucky enough to stumbled upon your old prepubescent throat muscle positions. As if you're remembering how you USED to use your throat/tongue muscles before going through puberty. I believe, with practice, you can build on this as the hormones continue to change you, and develop more control over your tones, and strengthen your vocal chords.

I think you should practice singing along with a female singer with your newly discovered voice, and try your best to imitate them.
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Eve of chaos

I hope I can find it again when I need it.
I stumbled upon it on accident

VeronicaL

OK I gave both the voices a listen.

The second file is far superior.  I would totally scrap the first voice.  But that's just my opinion.

I can hear some good stuff in the 2nd file but you seem anxious....a voice crack and microphone feedback make it hard too tell.  But at 0:26 of the 2nd file, when you say; "This feels like how I wouldn't normally talk".  That's your voice.  If you can find that again you're laughing.  For 2 seconds you nail it.

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Eve of chaos

I've bene p[racticng with that vopice more and mrope but i cant seem to figure out what needs to cahgne to amke it sound better. ti soudns so fake and awful right now.

I stikc with the first voice when talking to tohers for now, jsut becasue i dont tihnk its as alughable, btu I'm going to work on thsi second voice everyday untill i fix it

apple pie

About not knowing what to change: I think it's a matter of experimenting. Change something random about how you produced the sound, and then record again... If it sounds crap, get rid of it; if it sounds okay, try to do the next random change based on this voice :)

And I find singing male songs useful too, if they are not really low bass ones (any song that stays above at least C3 / 131 Hz or so is good I think). It helps me practise taking the male resonance out of my voice even when using my voice in a low pitch, which has been my main way of sounding feminine rather than raising my pitch. See I just sang a male song the other day to let my voice relax a bit after all my fairly-straining singing practice :P

One other thing is that even if you are already using all the right muscles, it takes some regular usage of them for the strength to build up, and then it will sound better :)
My way of speaking in a female voice hasn't changed much for over two years, but as I kept using it (before I went full-time, I extensively talked to my online friends on voice), it sounded less sandpaper-like and my endurance increased.
Unfortunately at the moment I think you are likely get clocked talking to someone who already suspects you might be trans...
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LifeInNeon

Sounding good! :) Keep at it though, I know a lot of trans women say they start losing ground when they stop working at it. (Sigh, so much maintenance in this process, eh?)

I did have a similar experience, though. Around two weeks after going full time I was doing my semi-daily recordings and I realized that something was different. I didn't try to find it, but my voice had landed somewhere where the chest resonance was almost entirely gone. It was surprisingly easy to speak in that tone and so I did everything I could to memorize how it "felt"; by that I mean I worked at figuring out how my muscles felt, and how it sounded to my own ear, without recording it. Since then, that's been the voice I use.

I found a few weeks ago that when I tried pushing my voice back to where it was for my Halloween costume, I could get my pitch back down but not the resonance. It freaked people out. It just sounded like a very, very deep-voiced woman. So. . . victory?

Lately, my struggle has been to let my voice drop and not fear that it is going back into "guy range". I need to work in more pitch variance so I don't come out monotone, since right now I ride the line where I break into falsetto.

This video was particularly helpful recently as I've tried to bridge the registers so I can go up rather than just down. (Note: I don't have time to watch it and make sure but I am 90% certain this is the right link. I'm not on my home computer so I don't have the bookmark.)

Keep at it. :)
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Eve of chaos

I'm starting to think that voice 2 is maybe falsetto and so it may not be what I should be doing.


Tristan

i kind of like voice 1. i know many woman with voices like it
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