A question about training my voice

[Melissa Jill]

Ive done some basic research and it seems that men have deeper voices because the voicebox muscles aren't as tight, so they don't vibrate as much causing a lower pitch.
So is it just a case of practicing with a higher pitch which will cause the voicebox muscles to become bigger and tighter, making a better feminine voice?
Because at the moment when I try speaking in a higher pitch it sounds a bit too soft and whispery.

[ReneeT]

Theres a lot more than pitch involved, like resonance, intonation, pacing, and phrasing. I highly recommend "Fundamentals of your Feminine Voice" by Kathy Perez

[Stephanie-L]

There is much more than pitch. Phrasing and other things come into play, feminine speaking is different than male. There are some good guides out there, both free and for sale. You can also get professional voice therapy, I am going to the voicy therapy school at my local university where the students are very willing to help me develop a more feminine voice. Good luck...........Stephanie

[StaceyJane]

I've worked on the Kathy Perez CD. The first thing you learn is how much you don't know. I still tend to talk in short phrases or give one word answers when out.
When I go for my therapy sessions I don't even bother trying to talk in a female voice.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

Go out...talk to people...be yourself...be a girl...it works...you need to fail upwards...say things in a voice that gets you read, say things in a voice that gets the "huh?!?!" look...say things in an overly femme way...
that's how you learn...

The training part only helps if you use it as a practical tool...if pitch is your problem..learn a slightly higher pitch...same for resonance...controlling it is learnable and improves with practice.....using it day to day makes it happen

the trial and error of day to day conversation is the only way....unless you plan to speak from index cards your whole life...

over and over the experience is all this work and then one day you realize you have this different voice..

[Midnight Skye]

Yes female voice training is hard and takes lots and lots of practice. There are a TON of really good tips out there. One of the best I've heard is to feel your voice box as you're training.

What you'll notice is a male voice has distinct vibrations down in the lower thorax. A female (higher pitched) voice has much less vibrations in the lower thorax, but instead crisp lighter vibrations in the upper thorax. I spent lots of time practicing by singing (I can't sing) along with different female artists till I found a few songs I could keep some of the pitch with. Eventually you'll start to find the right pitch and resonance.

After that I would talk to myself every day for 1-2 hours blabbing about anything and everything, often times listening to the radio or TV listening to female announcers, or DJs. This is where I worked to focus on pacing, phrasing, and sing song (connection between words and emphasis of syllables).

As others have mentioned what you'll learn after working on it for a month is there is ALOT to learn. There are all kinds of different ways to speak, and different ways to sound feminine.

At this point I think I've been practicing for nearly two years. I don't actively practice much any more, just some separation tests between my male voice and female voice so that I can remember which is which (blush). I'm not even close to being fulltime so I imagine some folks could point out better pointers than me :battingeyelashes:

Honestly if you practice hard you do re-train the muscles of your voice box and getting a pure proper male voice can start to require some mental and voice box effort.

It is very fulfilling though in the end, even with simple things like picking up food and getting Mammed... To people assuming you're your wife on the phone... it never fails to make me smile

[Traci Elizabeth]

One simple tip: Don't talk from your chest but from your head.

Do this: place the palm of your hand on your chest and talk. If you feel chest vibration then you are talking wrong. Put once you realize where you voice is resonating from (chest), you can pull your voice up into your your throat.
Now keep trying to push your voice up and feel your chest. As the days, weeks go by and you strengthen you muscles, you will feel less and less vibration in you chest and move vibration in your throat.

After you master that, then pull your voice up into your head. The easiest way I found to do that is to tighten your muscles just underneath the bottom of your lower jaw. Then keep working that until you feel no vibration in your chest and it is all coming from your head. Now that is just to get your voiced up into the high range (you don't want to go to high else you will sound like Minnie Mouse.)

Then work on fluctuation your pitch as you talk.

Lastly, speaking in male voice part of the day and female voice part of the day make refining your female voice much harder. I would opt for female voice 24/7.

[Hope]

It is a bit more complicated than that. But you have the right IDEA... at least from the perspective of what you need to know... There are actually 2 sets of muscles that control the voice - one set is in control of the deeper pitches and another set is in control of the higher pitches. Men naturally use the deeper set of muscles as the dominant set, and so have deeper voices, where women and children primarily use the higher set of muscles... That is the good news - because it means that you have everything you need already in your throat to produce an authentic feminine voice. The bad news is that you have to do a lot of training and a lot of practice to get one set of muscles to take over as the dominant set, and let the others atrophy so that you can use the higher pitched voice all the time.

The super bad news, is that it is not as simple as that.

As you already well know - if you pitch your voice up - and speak in a female pitch range, you don't sound like a woman. You sound like a monty python sketch. That is because there is MUCH more to speech than just pitch range.

There is intonation and pitch variation, and inflection, and word choice, and sentence construction, and word linking... and just tons of other stuff that makes up natural speech. The good news is that you, again, have everything you need - in your head, to learn how to do it. You also have a HUGE speech laboratory at your finger tips (It is called the world) where you can go and listen to people talk, and practice what you have observed.

The bad news of course, is that you have developed LOTS of bad habits. you have been enculturated to speak in a mono-tone (more or less) and from your chest. Women on the other hand, have been enculturated to speak with a ton of inflection, and from their heads... And it will take you MONTHS of constant diligent observation and practice before you will start to get it right.

But you can get there. It is just like everything else in this process: harder than expected, with a bigger pay-off than expected. And the interim, simply must be endured.

Like others have said, just keep practicing.

If i had to give you one hint, it would be this: intonation and pitch variation within a sentence is more important than average pitch. You can pull off "girl" on the phone in a man's pitch range, if you do everything else right - but the opposite does not fly. When you practice, think about imitating the biggest, ditziest sorority sister you can think of... and when you think you are over-doing it - do it twice as much, and you will be about where you need to be. Seriously. Pay way more attention to inflection than pitch and you will be in a good place. Also pay close attention to pitch and practice the hell out of that.

[Stephenie S]

Mostly you have to just DO it.

Somewhat like transition itself, nothing will happen until you actually do it. Trying to switch back and forth, trying to maintain TWO voices, your "guy" voice and your "girl"" voice is extremely problematic and usually successful only for the vocally talented. I often say the easiest way to find your female voice is to go full time. As long as you can slip back into your comfortable "guy" voice you probably will. When you HAVE to use your female voice 24/7, you may get in the required practice. And practice is just what you need.

Try to think about getting your voice UP out of your chest and into your head (or mouth). Men use the resonate cavity of their chest. Women use the resonate cavity of their mouth and head.

Of course, as has been said already, try to put more musicality into your voice.

And stop worrying about how you sound. Women's voices are all over the map.

S

[Inna]

One of the hardest parts of transition, and believe me, the other stuff isn't easy by any means as you probably already know. Time and practice, but, practice within an appropriate set of exercises is vital. In time your voice box becomes the tool you control, but until then is just like becoming a pilot, practice what you've learned over and over and over and...........

Good luck (I have written this post in female voice :eek: )

[JohnH]

It is a bit more complicated than that. But you have the right IDEA... at least from the perspective of what you need to know... There are actually 2 sets of muscles that control the voice - one set is in control of the deeper pitches and another set is in control of the higher pitches. Men naturally use the deeper set of muscles as the dominant set, and so have deeper voices, where women and children primarily use the higher set of muscles... That is the good news - because it means that you have everything you need already in your throat to produce an authentic feminine voice. The bad news is that you have to do a lot of training and a lot of practice to get one set of muscles to take over as the dominant set, and let the others atrophy so that you can use the higher pitched voice all the time.

Interesting thought. Not on topic, but there is a female choir, Vivaldi's Women, that sing soprano, alto, tenor, and bass at the proper pitches. The basses must of practiced using the deeper set of muscles, and have gotten so good at singing in that range that in that bass section there are baritones and true basses!


If i had to give you one hint, it would be this: intonation and pitch variation within a sentence is more important than average pitch. You can pull off "girl" on the phone in a man's pitch range, if you do everything else right - but the opposite does not fly. When you practice, think about imitating the biggest, ditziest sorority sister you can think of... and when you think you are over-doing it - do it twice as much, and you will be about where you need to be. Seriously. Pay way more attention to inflection than pitch and you will be in a good place. Also pay close attention to pitch and practice the hell out of that.

Raising the pitch of my speaking voice is not an option I wish to pursue since I do not want to weaken my bass singing voice. So I need to pay attention to the other aspects.

Johanna (John)

[*Vanessa*]

The neat things about 'becoming you' is that WE finally get to be yourselves, regardless. There is tons of stuff on changing the voice online, as I am sure you know, both good and bad.

Just be yourself Melissa, get dress, go out and have some fun, and the rest will follow. Wanna play and have some fun? Put your favourite girl song on and sing along. I love doing this while alone in the car, tunes cranked and singing along with Adele (of late) and it does change the vocal cords.

[StacyC]

My biggest problem is being relaxed enough to practice my female voice lol. I cant stop laughing or blushing when I try to practice. I like the idwa of talking like a soriety sister. Def gonna try that.

[Hope]

My biggest problem is being relaxed enough to practice my female voice lol. I cant stop laughing or blushing when I try to practice. I like the idwa of talking like a soriety sister. Def gonna try that.

It is REALLY liberating... and helpful. I was having a LOT of trouble with my voice - and uber vamping it up like that helped a LOT. Of course, for every-day speech you might tone it down a bit, but for practice - it is really helpful to just go over the top. Just do it. Push through.

The feeling silly and blushing - that will go away after you start practicing a bit. The best advice I received in that regard was to start in the car. Just start reading street signs, billboards, bumper sticker,s ANYTHING and EVERY thing in your girl voice... Most of us spend LOTS of time in the car alone where we can be practicing without fear of embarrassment - and you can make your morning commute do double duty. Sure, you end up sounding a little bit like a GPS at first, but it is better than sounding like a boy...

[Jennie1975]

Melissa, I copy and pasted this info from a story called "The song of puberty" from a Harvard publication.

The larynx is located in the throat, at the top of the trachea (also called the wind pipe) and it contains the vocal cords. These two muscles tighten and relax to change how air passes through the larynx. When you raise or lower the pitch of your voice, it is the tightness of the vocal cords that causes the pitch to change. So, changes in the larynx or vocal cords affect your voice.

During puberty, testosterone causes a boy’s larynx to get bigger. The vocal cords also lengthen and thicken in response to testosterone—in fact they can increase in length more than 60% in boys during puberty.

Just as the shortest strings on a harp or piano make the highest sounds, the short vocal cords of children produce voices that are high in pitch. The longer cords of adult males produce lower pitched voices.

As girls go through puberty, their vocal cords also lengthen, but they grow a more modest 25%, so their voice changes are not as noticeable.

http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100249837

I know thats a short little read yet it gives you the basis for why the voice changes. Changing it back is close to unringing a bell but I know for a fact you can train yourself to get to the lower range of what people hear as female. One thing I have found though is if you start off "branding" yourself as female then you are more able to get away with a lower voice, broader shoulders, bigger hands, (Insert any common self doubt about oneself).

Jennifer

[Aprilrain]

Go out...talk to people...be yourself...be a girl...it works...you need to fail upwards...say things in a voice that gets you read, say things in a voice that gets the "huh?!?!" look...say things in an overly femme way...
that's how you learn...

The training part only helps if you use it as a practical tool...if pitch is your problem..learn a slightly higher pitch...same for resonance...controlling it is learnable and improves with practice.....using it day to day makes it happen

the trial and error of day to day conversation is the only way....unless you plan to speak from index cards your whole life...

over and over the experience is all this work and then one day you realize you have this different voice..

What she said, just do it and please don't talk in falsetto, it sounds ridiculous!