Okay, I know this is going to sound a little nerdy, but I just got the "Fundamentals of your Feminine Voice" from Kathe Perez and have started practicing with the CD.
In the CD Kathe says that a good target to shoot for is the A3 tone, which is the average female pitch. Part of the training is just getting used to hearing the A3 tone, and practicing humming it or singing, "he" "ha" "hoo" at that pitch. The more you get used to hearing this particular pitch, the easier it is to automatically tune your voice to that new pitch when you are speaking. So the theory goes anyway. She has a lot of satisfied customers who can attest.
Anyway, while I was on my Windows 7 computer here, I just happened to notice that there's a really easy way to find the A3 tone, so that I can easily practice it throughout the day to myself. It just so happens that in Windows 7 the sound for "Critical Stop" and "Default Beep" are both A's!
One easy way to hear this tone is just click on the little speaker icon on the very bottom right hand side of your screen, a volume box will come up. Then just click on the slider. This is actually an "A4" (an octive above A3), but it's the same key that you'd need to practice in!
The other way to hear it easily would be to bring up the "Change System Sounds" setting in the control panel and then find the "Critical Stop" or "Default Beep". Those sounds are A3 and A4 respectively.
It's a really easy way to find the right key and hum it throughout the day if you don't have a tuner with you. Or if your work won't give you access to Youtube or something.
