Practicing my female voice in secret.

[Abigail3051]

Hello, So with all the research iv'e been doing I found one of the things you can do before you even start to transition is to practice your female voice and I want to do that, but I have an issue finding a way to practice it without anyone finding out, because it would obviously make a lot of noise. I wish I could just lock myself in a sound proof room and practice there, but unfortunately that's a bit unrealistic. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to practice without anyone knowing? I know I might be asking something impossible but maybe theirs something I never considered, I thought it couldn't hurt to ask.

 

The Confused one.
~Abby

[Jani]

Singing is always a good way to get into differing vocal ranges.  Or you could read aloud to yourself.  

 

Jani

[VickySGV]

A good part of your "female voice" is not so much your pitch as it is your word choice and pronunciation of the words. Go to your public library and pick out some movie and play scripts with strong female roles and read their dialogue over in the city park or wherever.  Not full stealth, but many of my friends pull it off.  "The play is an assignment for a class I am taking!"

 

I work with a chorus made up of Trans people who sing publicly and the gang all have wide ranges that at very least would make people wonder.  Some of the prettiest most girly Trans women in our group sing baritone in their natural voices and are low pitch women in daily life.  ( I am second/low tenor)  If you listen to our speaking voices our voices are poly tonal where male speech is more of a monotone.  Also we pronounce each syllable of a word, as women tend to do.

[Abigail3051]

These are both very helpful, Thank you.

[Abigail3051]

Okay weird thing, I got this app on my phone called "Voice pitch Analyzer" and I did my best neutral sounding female voice I could do and I fell very well into the female range? Like without even dipping down into the Male range and a few times without even dipping into androgynous range. How is that possible? I think this app isn't very good, but is it possible for my natural "Softer" voice can actually pass as a female voice? Isn't it supposed to take a fair amount of effort to transition between your male and female voice so I shouldn't be able to do that right? Iv'e never had a chance to use it until just now because I was left home alone for a little while. I'm confused ._.

Another note that may or may not be important to this, I did a bit of research and found out that can help to practice a "Mickey Mouse" voice, and I always was good at doing a Mickey impression.
I guess to put my question simply:
Is it possible for me to have already unintentionally mastered the pitch of my female voice, causing me to only need to focus on maintaining it and my pronunciation?
(If that's the case than that's freaking awesome!)

Genuinely Confused
~Abby

[Jani]

Just now, Abigail3051 said:

Is it possible for me to have already unintentionally mastered the pitch of my female voice, causing me to only need to focus on maintaining it and my pronunciation?

Yes certainly.  You may have been speaking in a higher register all along.  Now just focus on not dropping down at inflection or when excited.   Pronunciation and using the language of women is important.  Listen carefully and you'll find women phrase things differently than men. 

 

Have fun!
Jani 

[VickySGV]

As I said above, my voice is naturally a lower Tenor, but with some stuff I do hit the higher range without any effort.  My big difference is that with "male voice" my resonance is down in my lower throat and I can feel it in my upper chest.  "Girl voice" which has actually been more comfortable and less of an effort all of my life resonates at the back of my mouth above my vocal cords.  As far as  volume goes I have no problems with my voice in the "girl" range and I am a Lay Reader in my church and have no problem being heard at the back even without a microphone.  Some of us have had "girl" voices all our lives and did not realize it since we were trying so hard to be male.  We have too many people freaking out about their voices and thinking  they need to be soprano to "voice pass" when a happy, smiling high baritone with female inflections and rhythm actually make them beautiful as women.

[Kirsten]

I tend to agree with what was said. I spent a lot of my life purposely trying to sound more male. I used to get ma’amed on the phone all the time till I was like 35. Now I am unlearning all of that. Voices come in so many shapes and sizes the sound is only a small piece. Like Vicky and Jani said, there’s a lot more to a “female” voice than pitch and tone. 

I ask my female friends to correct me whenever I am sounding too male. And I assure you they love correcting me lol. If you have a confidant you could try that. I find actually using your voice in normal conversation is the best way to practice. Also singing seems to help me when I am alone for extra practice. Try using a recorder too. It’s helpful to hear yourself back on tape. 

❤️Kirsten 

[jae bear]

I find that I like to practice tuning up my voice while driving in the car... My voice therapist tested my normal range and determined that I can speak very naturally in the 200hz range but I would be happier if I could stay comfortably in the 220hz range. Most importantly your tone needs to sound female, typical male voices resonate from the chest where female voice tends to resonate from the head, specifically the nasal cavity and cranium. As others have mentioned the pronunciation is an important factor, as well as prosody and cadence, luckily I have always naturally spoken this way even if it has gotten me a lifetime of having people occasionally ask if I am gay... I really don't mind anymore but it used to bug me and kick off an overreaction causing me to attempt a deeper male voice that sounded very fake. I guess I didn't realize then that it was more my tone and speech pattern than my pitch. I find that in the early morning and late evening my pitch starts dropping when I get tired, quite annoying! I also found a psychological component that my voice therapist noticed, if I am speaking with a deep voiced male, or face to face with a very masculine male I have trouble keeping my pitch up due to the old habits of hiding any clues about my true self, this is proving to be a hard habit to break. Conversely, I find that if I am talking with females or face to face with a woman I fall right into my natural range and often bring my pitch up even higher without intending to, I suppose this is a bit of a blessing in disguise... I am starting to think that might be why I get refereed to as Ma'am on the phone quite often with women and sir on the phone when I speak with men, although I also found that gay males tend to think I am female, but not always! One important factor in all of this may be hard for others where I have no roadblock, I use my female voice at all times, I don't want to hear my fake male voice at all ever, but I do realize this might seem odd to some since I still appear mostly male. As the year wears on that opinion should change, but I find that facial hair is one of the biggest contributing factors to gender presentation at this time in my transition, as my hair gets even longer and my facial hair is nearing extinction thanks to 3 hours a week on the electrologist table, I am hoping I find it much easier to drop the psychological aspect when talking to men face to face... I wish I had an idea how to combat the pitch drop when tired, but so far it just is what it is and I focus on my tone...

 

[Abigail3051]

Makes sense, I guess what I need to do than is wait until I can start practicing regularly, I look forward to the day everyone can know my secret.

[VickySGV]

34 minutes ago, Abigail3051 said:

Makes sense, I guess what I need to do than is wait until I can start practicing regularly,

 

Start now in regular conversation.  I'll bet you that no one will really know you are doing it as long as you do not use casual terms of address that women use with each other and men freak out on when guys use them man to man.  To each other women use "dear" or the variations on the word 'honey".  We rarely use them to men unless it is a date or a family member.  Coming from a man to a woman they can be creepy if not one of the previous relations. Until your appearance is cluing up  female that is about the only caution on just using your voice as is.  The only hitch could be if your family is badly homophobic and they could interpret it as "Gay". 

[jae bear]

 I agree completely with Vicky, using your voice in normal conversation is perfectly fine, I found myself unable to keep myself from falling into my normal girl voice inside conversations with others  especially other women. My case may be a tad unique as I’ve been working hard at maintaining a rather monotone male voice to throw everyone off for years and years, as once I become relaxed and speak as saying I normally would  I would often get questioned about my sexuality, friends and family members both often asked me rather personally if I was gay ...  but now that I don’t care what people think it’s rather freeing, and I only find the old cover ups happening around rather masculine men with deep voices, a bit of a psychological hang up for me but something I’m getting over. I don’t think anyone but my wife had noticed the changes in my voice even if they were only slight, I would say more than anything my tone had changed  rather than my pitch, but she picked up on it immediately and still does...  my wife notices any change almost immediately these days, I can see the confusion in her eyes when she notices some new facet she hadn’t seen before, I can tell it’s distressing to her since she is now confused as to who I am and it’s very troubling to me that I am causing his confusion within her. But at the same time I’m no longer covering for myself,  and I have no intention of hiding my voice,  and I’m doing my best to keep my pitch in range starting at 220 Hz and trying not to drop or downward inflect below 200 but it does take quite a bit of effort for now as it’s rather new to me, but I find once I’m rolling along in voice it comes rather naturally. I think you’ll find that once you hit upon your tone and prosody it is that much easier to  move into pitch alteration, I would almost say don’t worry about pitch so much for right now as get your tone right, do what you can to perfect Cranial resonance, then work on your speech patterns and prosody, these two things are important first steps as most female speech patterns have a very specific cadence. I have found a few rather  helpful YouTube videos that give you detailed information about cranial residence and how to achieve this, just be careful not to fall into glottal fry, even though it is a bit on the female side it’s not a pleasant thing to hear, and I’m often guilty of doing it myself as is every female in my family. I hate to admit this but I’ve always had a fair amount of up speak, and while this does rather normally occur in female speech I wish I could get rid of it ...

 Hugs, 

Jackie