Interesting Voice Range Experiment/Theory: Share if you Dare!

[ElegantLady]

Hi!

I am sharing a recording of my current bottom to top range in a quick siren exercise. If you dare, please do share your own range's recording or if you are uncomfortable sharing it for the public, please do send me a PM, specially if you have no idea of what I am talking about in terms of notes, octaves or even Hertz and would like a little help learning these basic concepts, necessary to train your voice correctly.

Here's the recording of my siren exercise, with voice breaks and all

WARNING: IF YOU ARE USING HEADPHONES DO LOWER THE VOLUME TO ALMOST THE MINIMUM AND THEN ADJUST IT ACCORDINGLY, TO AVOID HEARING DAMAGE

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0Fj4vYd0EuW

As a side note, I would like to tell everybody that I have been training my voice to speak with a feminine voice, for a bit more than a year non-stop now. I used to be a true tenor years ago, before my trachea shave, but afterwards I believe I became a baritone, with a high-note extension. Also I started HRT more than five years ago BTW and I do present as female in public on a daily basis, so it's not like I am just starting my transition or something. However, having a credible voice is STILL one of my main concerns at this point.

Anyways, I am very curious to see how other people, specially people like me, with trained voices, whether you had voice surgery or not --I haven't myself BTW-- are doing.

WHAT MY EXPERIMENT IS ABOUT

NOTE: I will speak mostly in terms of note and octave. If you are more familiar with Hertz, here's a very useful chart I uploaded, with Note-Octave and Hertz equivalencies.

http://imgbox.com/OTTxMvJs

My experiment revolves around this theory: people who are natural high tenors and started training their voice during their teenage years (HELLO CHIBI_USA lol), regardless of whether or not you started HRT at such an early age, can be able to achieve 100% credible and authentic-sounding female voices, whereas others like me who are NOT high tenors and started practicing voice feminisation after our puberty was over, have a very difficult time sounding "authentic", even though we DO SOUND feminine, not even androgynous at all, but it sounds sort of like a bit weird or "fakeish", even resembling pre-pubescent children at times, because our voices, even while being in the correct pitch-range and placing the resonance in the right area, do not sound "naturally thin", because our vocal cords are simply not as naturally short and thin as those of a male high-tenor, countertenor or a female contralto.

BOTTOM LINE:

1) My experiment consists of hearing other TG women's siren exercises, and then your telling me, in percentage, how feminine you think your voice is, so I can verify if my theory is correct. IOW, if you can go much higher than me in the 6th octave, I would assume that with proper voice training, you can actually sound 90-100% feminine, just like any cis woman would.

2) The range you can hear in my recording, from vocal fry to super-head voice is E2 to C6. --82 to 1047, in Hertz--. I know I can't be a tenor if I can go this low in vocal fry. My singing range would actually be A2 to G5, something like that. I mean I can sing those bottom and top notes with power and vibrato, sustaining them for at least five seconds. But I never sing any lower than D3 or higher than F5 or F#5 in reality, because I am still having many issues with my voice breaks and breath support. So I'd say I am able to sing songs in a D3 to F5 range, but I still have issues with my voice breaks (1st and 2nd passaggios).

3) I would say that my female voice is about 70% passable. In pitch, resonance and inflections it may be about 85% but the "fakeness" it has because I just can't make it sound as naturally thin as either cis women or lucky male high-tenors and countertenors sound (think about Michael Jackson, both speaking and singing, for an excellent example of a male countertenor) is what degrades it to 70% tops. So in the end, about 70% passable sounds like a realistic assessment. It's enough to pass voice-wise in public, but I know I still sound kind of weird, compared with most women.

PLEASE if you do not have any voice training and don't know how to properly warm up your voice before going to extreme low or high pitches, do not try this, because you could end up damaging your vocal cords permanently!

If you want to learn how to warm up your voice before doing sirens from the bottom of your range to your top note, to prevent vocal cord damage, please YouTube phrases such as "singing warm up exercises" or "voice warm up humming and lip rolls". Me, personally, what I do is humming in pitch, only notes in the middle of my range, and then I go higher doing lip rolls, until I get very close to my top note. ONLY UNTIL THEN do I start doing siren exercises. And I always keep my cords moist by drinking water and gargling or spraying water directly onto them.

Well, that's it. So go on, for those ones interested in helping me with my experiment/theory, please share if you dare!!!

Cheers

Elegant

[Guest LesleyAnne]

You've certainly peaked my interest since i am very concerned with my voice as passing....

So far my attempts have been dismal. But I'm afraid after reading all of your post I have no idea what you are talking about.

I would like to learn however.

[Guest Raya]

E2/80hz to b4/500hz based on a quick use of tuner. This is the extreme range for me.

120 to 400hz seems useable.

[ElegantLady]

You've certainly peaked my interest since i am very concerned with my voice as passing....

So far my attempts have been dismal. But I'm afraid after reading all of your post I have no idea what you are talking about.

I would like to learn however.

Well, I guess you don't know what I am talking about precisely because your attempts have been dismal so far! What I can tell you for sure, is that, for many of us, singing and improving our fem voice's credibility go hand in hand. To me, learning the musical notes was WAY EASIER, for voice practice purposes, than learning Hertz numbers, for female voice ranges. There's only seven primary musical notes: A B C D E F G. Of course, five of these notes have sharps/flats, so the real total number of notes is 12, but that is not so relevant when you are just beginning, because you have to memorize only seven letters to cover all the musical notes (A to G, that's it!). As your singing learning advances, you can naturally learn about the sharps and flats, it comes with the territory and it's not really a big deal.

Bottom line, an adult female speaking range covers, as an average, something between E3 and D4, in pitch (165 to 294 Hz or Hertz). This DOES NOT include giggling, laughing, yelling, sighing and other utterances different from just speaking. Again, for equivalencies in Hertz, please go to my chart here: http://imgbox.com/OTTxMvJs

If you look at it, you will see that E3 to D4 corresponds to 165 to 294 Hz (Hertz). I would say that, according to real life experience, the AVERAGE pitch of women when speaking is this; for a contralto, F#3 (185 Hz), for an alto G3 (195-200 Hz) and for a soprano, A3 (220 Hz). I can tell you with full certainty and confidence, that IT IS NOT TRUE that the average woman's speaking pitch is A3 (220 Hz). No way!!! That's the average pitch of soprano or even mezzo-soprano woman (women with higher-pitched voices). Yes, they may be bigger in percentage than altos and contraltos put together, but that does not make their range THE average range by any means. So for example if your pitch is E3 to B3 and your voice comes from the right placement (around the face mask as opposed to the throat or the chest), and your inflection and speaking style is very feminine, you will definitely will sound way more female in voice than many men or female impersonators that actually speak way higher in average pitch than women! Sorry I got carried away with this but I am sooo tired of all those books and methods saying that the average female pitch is A3/220 Hz) when IT IS NOT. Pure and simple! It's good, I mean to AIM FOR n A3 average. I mean, just a tad bit higher than the real average, so in the end you end up speaking in a reasonable average pitch such as G3. But they could mention this in the books, instead of using deception.

I just uploaded this Note/Hertz chart to illustrate for you which are the pitch ranges for the three most common ADULT voices; male, androgynous and female. It's pretty self-explanatory:

http://i.imgbox.com/Fk5cSFgd.jpg

I hope my response was helpful for you to start getting acquainted with this fascinating world of speaking and singing!!!

E2/80hz to b4/500hz based on a quick use of tuner. This is the extreme range for me.

120 to 400hz seems useable.

Thanks for sharing! I think your highest one is B4 because you just use your mixed voice, but probably you have not trained your pure head voice and your super-head voice. There are specific exercises to develop each register on You Tube. So I use different (VERY different) voice exercises to develop and strengthen my mixed voice, than the ones I use for head voice and then the super-head voice. I am just beginning, at this point, to try and do some exercises to transition from super-head into whistle, but so far I just haven't "found" my whistle register, so I have to be really patient, to avoid damaging my vocal cords.

[Guest LesleyAnne]

Thank you ElegantLady......

I have been struggling with trying so hard to reach A3 (as touted where I should be to sound normal female by a well known Speech Therapist who sells a lot of teaching video's) without my voice cracking, and sounding like Mrs. Doubtfire.

It is so frustrating, and so much so I have considered the voice surgery in Korea. But when I read that most of those surgeries have a success rate that is not acceptable, and the Doctor has no idea how you'll turn out, it discourages me from taking that risk.

So thank you for the links you've given to the charts, which looks to me a more realistic goal to shoot for......

Voice has been my biggest concern, since I'm old and look it, and not pretty, and will probably wake up that way again tomorrow passing for me has far more to do with voice than looks.

So again thank you.....I will continue to read your posts on this subject in hopes of learning more.

LesleyAnne

[ElegantLady]

Thank you ElegantLady......

I have been struggling with trying so hard to reach A3 (as touted where I should be to sound normal female by a well known Speech Therapist who sells a lot of teaching video's) without my voice cracking, and sounding like Mrs. Doubtfire.

It is so frustrating, and so much so I have considered the voice surgery in Korea. But when I read that most of those surgeries have a success rate that is not acceptable, and the Doctor has no idea how you'll turn out, it discourages me from taking that risk.

So thank you for the links you've given to the charts, which looks to me a more realistic goal to shoot for......

Voice has been my biggest concern, since I'm old and look it, and not pretty, and will probably wake up that way again tomorrow passing for me has far more to do with voice than looks.

So again thank you.....I will continue to read your posts on this subject in hopes of learning more.

LesleyAnne

Hi Lesley

You're welcome! If the therapist you are talking about is Kathe Perez, I do have her voice feminisation method (three audio files, covering pitch, resonance and inflection). It's good beginner stuff, VERY good IMO, Once you understand the theory behind the voice, when you start actually practicing it over and over, the theory starts making sense.

Something that really helps you is finding where your voice breaks are. Everybody has two main voice cracks, also called passaggios (primo and secondo as in 1st and 2nd). When you practice singing over and over and recording yourself, it becomes very clear where they are.

My 1st and 2nd breaks (passggios) are located in C#4 and F#4. That would make me a low tenor. So on good days I can sing songs OK without breaking horribly between F#4 and G4. When I go from low to high, the 2nd break is most noticeable; when I am going from high to low, then the 1st break is noticeable.

By knowing this, specially my 2nd passaggio (the one that is popularly known as the "voice crack", but in reality it is the 2nd break), I can know that my most comfortable songs are those which barely touch G4s as the highest note, but not repeatedly and not in a sustained fashion.

The song Landslide by Stevie Nicks is a great example of a contralto song that touches G4 only once at the end of the song, and the rest of it lays on a semi-comfortable range that even a trained baritone can sing in the same pitch as her. And to sound feminine, you just do mixed voice all the time (resonance in the throat and voice mask) as opposed to the chest.

One unique thing that I do is to record the same song in several different pitches both below and above its original version, based always on the highest note of the song.

So for example, for Landslide, I use the G4 part of the song where she screams ooooh ooooh the landslide brings you down. (the "land" utterance is where the G4 takes place) and then I use audio editing software to make that specific part one semitone lower or higher. So I could end up with a bunch of versions of the same song: one with G4 as the highest note (the original version), and also others with F4, F#4, G#4, A4, A#4, B4 and C5. Then as part of my practice any day I feel like it, I start singing that song --or just parts of it-- in progression from F4 until C5 if my cords feel good. That has helped me get more flexible cords, which really helps when laughing or giggling, as well as raising my voice or just for general inflection, to avoid sounding monotone. Also when sneezing I can end the sneeze with a very high-pitch as in the "ooo" final part, and it sounds feminine. When I cough, I try to consciously do it in a similar fashion as I do my sneezing. Geesh, it's a bunch of things to focus on!

If you are interested in voice practice with me through FB, Skype, Yahoo Mssgr or other media that allows voice calling, please don't hesitate to PM me. I have free time for this and it's always good to practice and hear other people's input as well as giving some feedback oneself, to help each other. I agree that voice is very important, because to me it's part of a whole "female package". Some people do have the mannerisms down but their voice totally fails because they neglect it. In my own personal opinion, voice is more important than mannerisms. But of course a combination of everything having a "pass" is always the way to go.