Voice getting Deeper.o_O

[Guest Nikkichick33]

Hi everyone, I hope all is well. I have been practicing my voice lately using the videos done by youtube member Candi Fla, It seems my voice is just getting deeper ever since i have been training it doing falsetto. Anyone else ever noticed this or something similar??

Nikki..

[VickySGV]

All I have done to my voice is change its point of projection from my chest to the back of my throat which does take me up an octave, but a female voice is also about word inflections and pronounciations, and conversation content to female subjects. Its the content part that marks "woman" much more than the pitch of the voice does in my experience.

I can tell the difference if I project from my chest area vs my throat area, but by now I have to consciously put my voice into my chest projection, and it sounds fake to me.

[Drea]

I tried listening to a couple of them and found them to be very long for how little guidance they actually gave. I don't necessarily disagree with the info, but found it lacking. Does she ever discuss resonance?

In one sense pushing into falsetto, from that point one is lowering pitch, it usually ends up a little higher and it is about changing resonance. Pitch means little resonance is the key factor.

Anyways if it is going lower into a more open, deep resonance then that is moving in the wrong direction.

[Guest Nikkichick33]

HI, thanx you both for responding...Drea, what is resonance?

[Guest LizMarie]

Resonance comes from the voice echoing into the chest cavity creating a deeper, more "booming" male voice. This happens because the male larynx descends during puberty (caused by testosterone) to a lower position in the throat, creating a larger distance from the larynx to mouth cavity - a longer vocal tract. You can generally tell you are speaking with male resonance if you place two fingers across the clavicle at the top of the sternum and speak. If you can feel clear vibrations, you are almost certainly speaking with male resonance.

With practice you can raise the larynx higher in the throat and will feel almost no vibration at the clavicle when doing so. When you start doing this, it's very tiring and you won't be able to do it for long, but as you practice, you will get better at it and be able to hold the position longer and longer. Some transwoman so completely retrain their throat muscles that they then find it hard to speak male.

Incidentally, forcing the larynx higher, which shortens the vocal tract, also raises pitch a slight amount. For some, this pitch change alone is sufficient to be identified as a female speaker. For others, additional pitch training or voice surgery is required.

[Drea]

HI, thanx you both for responding...Drea, what is resonance?

Descriptive terms are someone imprecise so technical definitions may not be strictly accurate but suffice for understanding. This is going to get long to explain it.

Starting with what Liz said:

Resonance comes from the voice echoing into the chest cavity creating a deeper, more "booming" male voice.

.

.

You can generally tell you are speaking with male resonance if you place two fingers across the clavicle at the top of the sternum and speak. If you can feel clear vibrations, you are almost certainly speaking with male resonance.

I don't necessarily disagree, but Liz has only discussed in terms of "male resonance". Resonance is not a specific male trait. Just like changing pitch, resonance can be changed to and what tends to convey gender is more linked to changing resonance. Or to more correctly put it, working on resonance will end up moving pitch at the same time so pretty much pitch can be ignored.

In the videos you were looking at Nikki, she describes it like climbing over a wall. Being on one side of the wall being male sounding and other side being female. Now what she was indirectly describing was male resonance verses female resonance. That on one side of the wall she could go up and down in pitch still sounding male while the other side go up and down in pitch and sound female. The going over a wall description is apt cause when working on voice to start, the common point is with no resonance which is at a falsetto.

So the question remains, what is resonance?

I like to think in terms of a guitar. You can pluck a string and it will make a tone. That is the equivalent of pitch and the tone isn't pure and has some harmonic content. The cavity of the guitar is a resonance chamber and it amplifies certain range of tones and thus adds to the fullness of the sound.

Now a string has an inherent tone based upon thickness, length and tightness. You can force a thicker string that produces a nice low tone to produce a higher tone by stretching it tighter and shortening it (by pinching it against a fret) but the tonal quality of this higher tone is nothing like what a thinner string will produce. The harmonic content will be different thus how it interacts with the cavity of the guitar will produce a very different overall note even if the base tone is identical. Also the string that is forced when plucked will make sound for a fraction of a second while the thinner string can be strummed and make a tone lasting a few seconds.

Working with voice is like trying to take that thick string and produce higher tones. The problem is that in addition to T causing vocal cords to thicken, male developed bodies have longer vocal cords and larger voice box. The tendency of the larger voice box is to accentuate the lower tones.

Working on pitch alone has the effect of trying to force that thicker guitar string to produce a higher note. As that gets forced the fullness of the tones, like with the guitar string gets lost and you still have the voice box accentuating whatever low tones there are and not helping create any fullness in higher tones.

Instead, focusing on resonance what one is trying to do is change the form of the voice box so that it accentuates the higher tonal content and de-emphasize the lower tones. Thus one doesn't have to move the pitch up so much because the lower tonal content while still there will get de-emphasized while the higher tones will be accentuated. This will produce a much full sounding voice with broader tonal content that is overall higher sounding.

Even if one doesn't think in these terms, those who have been successful, like Candifla, have in fact changed their resonance.

...I know that was long...deep breath...

So let me give some practical suggestions. I started out using two fingers to help get the feel of what I needed to do to change resonance. Place one on your larynx just above the breastbone (in that knoll at the base of the neck) and the other on the adams apple. When you speak in a male voice you will feel vibrations with both fingers. You are using your full vocal cords and voice box. When you go into a full falsetto you should not feel vibrations under either finger. At that point you have effectively suppressed your full voice box and removed most resonance.

The trick is to suppress part of the voice box while allowing the rest to resonate. This means you feel vibration under just one of the two fingers.

Does it matter if upper or lower finger? Its been so long I don't recall what the people I learned it from recommended. I hear people continually say speak from your head and I think the recommendation was to suppress the vibration at the bottom finger and have vibration only up at the adams apple. As for me, I vary it. I find more often than not I suppress the upper vibration, but find I bounce around changing from just the upper to just the lower in a sentence of even a word. I think, for me at least, suppressing the upper, using the lower is more natural sound. If I suppress just the lower and force it to stay in the upper I start sounding a bit nasal and I think it sounds more effeminate (gay) than female. I did start by focusing just on suppressing one. I tend to think it was the lower I suppressed at first but that was over a decade ago so it has evolved.

It is hard to describe how to suppress the one section. All I can say is that you push up into falsetto and then try and pull pitch down and open it up a little without opening it up all the way. There is a middle area where it starts to open but still suppressed where you end up with a wicked ole witch sound. Continuing to push pitch down lower from there it will open up and sound more natural. It takes time (expect at least 6 months)

Note when I say "lower" referring to pitch, I am saying in comparison to the falsetto. As a practical matter, as you bring it down you are also suppressing part of the vocal chord and you won't even get pitch all the way down to male range.

[JJ]

Although I have been away from that milieu for a long time most colleges that had a speech program-especially speech pathology which is centered around speech and voice production-had students eager to tutor or give lessons and earn a few bucks. Though their classes and lnowledge are not aimed at transgender issues or gender related as far I know the education the have in the mechanics of voice production would be applicable. Another possible resource would be a drama department because some also teach voice production and in some cases do cover the gender differences.

Just an idea of you are near a college town. The acceptance of us tends to be very good on campuses and when it comes to a student in need of funds or a project the whole trans issue is likely to be inconsequential to them. A high school speech or drama teacher could also be a resource depending on the attitudes and atmosphere in your community

Having a coach or outside help can make a big difference because we don't really hear and assess ourselves very well and those who are around us all the time don't hear impartially usually even when they try. Nor do we have the training in voice production someone in drama or speech would in many instances

[Drea]

I know a number of folks who have tried working with voice coaches and their results have varied to a large degree because of what the particular coach focused on. Ones that went to someone who specialized in trans generally had very positive results, but even some of the non-trans specialists helped.

I think the issue is that most of the average voice coaches just don't understand the root of what makes one voice sound female verses one that sounds male other than the obvious, higher pitch. More significantly, having discussed with some who weren't having luck with their voice coach the coach's focus was entirely wrong.

The type of coaching is directed and fully using their voice box, strengthen vocal cords, exercises to move pitch upwards (the old belief it is pitch thing). These are the types of things a speech pathologists would do for most any client because their typical client is one with damage to voice box or vocal cords or one who has developed abnormal speaking habits and straining vocal cords.

For MTF though, to change the resonance, what one wants to do is pretty much the opposite of what voice coaches try to teach. To go from using full voice box and actually strangling their voice in a way at first and developing and strengthen what would typically be considered bad habits. And that is why one has to be especially careful to not overdue it. It takes time to work into it.