Voice

[Guest karen_h]

this is a subject we all probably need work om lord knows i do. hopefully we canset up a dialoge here to help and discover ways of voice training. look forward to comments and replies

[Guest SharleahLynn]

there are voice programs out there to use if you want to throw the money to purchase them.

Or you can help me locate the program that was left with me .

Then again , you can do as some folks do. Work on it freehand.

My voice is the same now as it was at 9 years old .

SharleahLynn

[Guest Sarah_G_L]

Mine doesn't sound great...but at least its further away from what it was.

Ive taken a lot of music classes back in school, so it wasn't too hard for me to do this, but i started with my base do, and raised it up to where i normally am at mi. I also tried speaking more from the upper chest, rather than from my gut. The combination gives me a voice that to my ears isn't horrible.

Its not too stressful on my vocal cords either, though it does get hard to maintain after a while.

[Guest A Girl]

Don't know how many people know about a free prgram called "Audacity". It's a pretty sophisticated audio program for 4 recording and then annalyzing it. You can really isolate and pick sounds apart and for a free one its pretty good. Think I found it on cnet last year. I do singing exercises to try to keep my voice in the proper range. Lot of info and techniques out there and it is a pretty obtainable feat for most people.

[Guest SharleahLynn]

Anyone can control how their voice sounds by constant practice. Starting with a little each day and increasing until the practice becomes a natural part of the everyday routine . Each day the person needs to be more and more dedicated toward achieving the voice level they wish to remain at. This method costs nothing but the time to reach the voice level.

SharleahLynn

[Guest Francine1947]

Thank You Shealeah Lynn Ill try it.

[Candy01]

My voice never broke as I was lucky enough to have started hormones and anti hormones before pubery kicked-in.

There was a girl I knew a few years ago however from here in Brighton who got herself sorted out fully when she was I think 20 or 21 and she looked very good even though she didn't start hormones until her late teens. The problem was, her voice! She used to sometimes break down in tears because she said it was so unfair and wished her voice sounded like mine. I gave it some thought that week and suggested to her I try and help train her voice. Anyway, I don't want to go into a long boring old story as I am really tired at the moment as it's gone 2am here.

The thing is; You have to work to someone you like ie; an actress, or singer. This girl liked my voice, so that made it easy! We worked on it over a period for about a month altogether and it worked!

The next problem she had which was still a total giveaway; The way she spoke although in a female pitch, she was talking like a teenage boy! Females don't speak that way! That took just as long as the pitch thing! another month or so. I tried not to get her to sound like a gay man but to talk normal like a female, getting her to use her tones up and down gently, also not to talk to fast but rather lengthen her words and enjoy using her words more politely, just like chewing your food slowly and longer, for example try saying 'Oh Right' say 'Oh' gently and slowly and raise the pitch right up when you say 'Right' and make the ' Right' last longer so it's like 'Riiiiight.'Her whole persona about her totally transformed and she has never felt more confident and even got to the stage she was cocky with it too and got away with it.lol.

It must obviously just come down to practice, and more practice and it obviously takes time and perseverance.

I think people should be able to do it alone rather than spending lots of money on the internet with people who claim miracles. Try using a recorder and tape yourself. It will take time, so don't throw the recorder out the window.lol

Hope this helps.

Luv Candy. XX

[Guest elenag]

Others said it is about practice. They're right. Although, I think frequency (as in how often) is more important than how many hours a day you practice. My regimen started at about 10 to 20 mins per session, then after several months graduated up to 20 mins to 2 hours per session. Sometimes I practiced 1 day a week, other times 5 days a week. A lot of practice was in the car on daily commutes.

In the beginning the voice box gets stressed out very quickly, so practicing 10 minutes and then giving it a rest for 6 hours before doing another 10 minutes helps. The most frustrating thing I experienced was wanting to practice longer but couldn't because my voice pooped out and needed to rest. By the way, I never felt any pain in my throat. I never pushed it beyond its limit.

It's also important to know what base frequency your voice is at, so using a voice frequency analyzer helped immensely. I would use one when starting out, otherwise you will have no feedback on your progress. After a while I just didn't need it anymore.

It took about 7 months before I stopped sounding like a gay man. After that I went through a 3 month period of sounding very androgynous. Many people in chat rooms would ask me if I was a man or woman. In the last couple months I've had another jump in improvement so I suppose there were 4 stages of development, including the one I'm currently striving for: endurance and consistency.

It's very easy to fool yourself into believing your voice passes when it doesn't, so I kept voice recordings on my PC to give me a frame of reference and track my progress. A lot of times I couldn't tell I sounded bad until I compared the old recording with the latest recording.

Recording and playback is the single most important part of practice. Keep whatever recordings you make so you can listen to them months later. I generally recorded myself reading a paragraph from a book and then reread the same text later on. Sometimes it's funny to hear how bad you once were and see how much you improved. That can a morale booster actually.

I generally take a few days off from practice now and then (as much as 3 weeks straight), sometimes out of frustration and other times by being too busy. I think taking time off between practice sessions is almost important as the practice itself. It helped my voice box mellow out between sessions.

I've also learned a lot by careful listening. I listened to female news and talk radio hosts. I listened while waiting in line, sitting on a bench in the mall, and lots of other places. I tried to mimic what they said and the inflection they used. Whenever I exercised on my elliptical machine, I turned on the radio... so no wasted time.

I've been doing voice practice for about 12 to 13 months by myself with only information gotten from the web. I can't vouch for voice lessons or training materials because I didn't use them, so it's possible progress could be sped up with those. Regardless, it doesn't matter because I know my voice passes. I've had hour long chats online only to shock people when I mentioned something that implied I was born male. I pass on the phone, voice chat, fast food drive-thru, or any voice medium, but I still practice because I won't be satisfied until it's flawless, which I understand could be never.

It's not perfect, but I suppose that's OK. Most of my practice now focuses on maintaining consistency, endurance, and more expressive speech. I consider it my effort to reach a 4th stage where I want it to be so natural I don't have to think about it.

I think the reason voice training is so difficult is because there are so many aspects of voice to retrain. Whether it's pitch, resonance, inflection, pronunciation, punctuation, nasal quality, softness, breathiness, etc, there are lots of factors that combine to produce a female voice. If you're lacking progress in just one of those, it can cause it not to pass.

I don't know for certain if it's possible for everyone to reach a point of passing with voice, but I believe it is. My voice had been on the low-side, so that's definitely not a deciding factor. As far as I understand, the voice box is constructed of cartilage connected to muscle: flexible tissue that can be molded to produce a wide range of sounds. It's just a matter of training.

[Guest Jenny]

Wow that seems like a very long process, just listening to all the different stories in the threads, it is almost like you have to put your life on hold ofr two to three years jsut to transition. Well I guess if it were only that easy.

[Guest Zenda]

Kia ora,

I don't have any problems with my voice when out in public but on the odd occassional over the phone I might get sir. I happened to mention this to a lesbian friend of mine who said that she also get the occassional sir over the phone. Both my psychogist and psychiatrist in their assessment reports had said I have a 'middle range 'female' voice'. I have not had any voice training. When speaking to a friend in the UK [over the phone] he didn't think my voice had changed but he said he could understand people not finding my normal voice male sounding, he thought my voice sounded 'androgynous'. Perhaps that what the psychs meant in their reports 'middle range 'female' voice'..Phones may always be a problem for some,but if one is fairly 'passable' in public, how ones voice sounds will not be too much of an issue... after all many genetic women have deep sounding voices !

Metta Jendar

[Guest Katie-Louise]

With the help of Brooke (Savagedm) I am practicing my female voice it's going really well at the moment It didn't sound deep before but it didn't sound feminine either so I would just like to say thank you to Brooker for helping me and BTW your voice sounds great keep practicing I will be asking for more tips on MSN lots of cuddles and kisses

Samantha

x

[Guest Storm Angel]

My voice certainly needs work too, my speech is already very good but my pitch and tone sounds 'stuck in the middle' not male but not femme either..

It still sounds warm, still deep enough for some people on the phone to call me 'sir'.

It is however, an improvement and much different to how it used to sound

[Guest SailorMercury]

WHen it comes to interesting links about voices, there is one must see person: Candi.

This person is my personal youtube superstar and it would be my wife/hubby if i had the choice - for sure!

Candi has an entire, very humorous and entertaining line of videoclips in youtube themed around transgender voice, and if it are those episode which arent teaching anything then they are as worthy to be watched as those formentioned just because of her acting and humor being one of a kind.

Thers a danger however - you cant prevent to fall in love with either her female, her male - or both sides.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=s7qSJ19f_QU

[Guest Madison_Always]

yeah ive seen Candi's videos they are very good imo. right now my voice is sort of either marge simpson or gay male so im working on trying to find some middle ground