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Hi girls,
So I started seeing a Tgirl Mistress recently, and when I was over a couple of days ago she said that the only thing that's stopping me from passing is my voice. I am raising the pitch and softening it, so it definitely sounds more feminine than my male voice but it still isn't passable.
I've watched some youtube videos about it but I was wondering if you girls had any tips on getting a nice feminine voice?
Tiffany
I'm looking for the same help that you are, Tiffany. I need to find a live vocal coach.
A couple of points:
Women's voices are all OVER the map. There is no "women's voice". They range from high and squeaky to low and sultry and everywhere in between.
Many women's voices sound weird. Just listen.
You HAVE to be ready to sound weird TO YOURSELF.
No one you meet has ANY idea what your voice sounds like. YOU are the only one who knows that your voice sounds weird.
Get your voice UP out of your chest. Stop using your chest as a resonate cavity and start using your MOUTH as a resonate cavity.
I guess that was more than a couple.
I am always amazed at the number of guys who say they can't "pass" because of their voice. Voice is the one male marker that you can change easily, cheaply, and at home. Change your height? Nope. Change your big feet and hands? Nope again. Change your deep chest and wide shoulders? Impossible. Change your facial features? Possible but very expensive and painful. But change your voice? Entirely within the realm of possibility.
I often say that the best way to change your voice is to go full time. That makes it impossible to fall back on your comfortable "guy" voice. You can't talk like a guy because you AREN'T a guy. You have to put on your big girl panties and just DO IT.
Stephie
This thread is interesting to me as I just joined a mailing list this weekend for someone called Jamie Young, who is selling a "Cross Dressing guide." I haven't bought the guide yet, but I got an email from her selling a feminine voice course, taught by Kathe Perez, a certified Speech Language Pathologist. It comes with three MP3 lessons and provides a source for a free frequency tuner to help you achieve the correct pitch for a woman's voice.
This looks really interesting to me, but the course is pretty expensive (under $100), though I spent almost twice as much online at Sephora the other day for makeup. I'm also afraid of losing my male voice. I want to be able to easily change back and forth. I guess it would be no different than what Rich Little or other impersonators do.
Since I haven't tried the course I can't recommend it, so I won't provide a link. But if you are interested, PM me and I will give it to you. And I just did a search on the speech expert's name and found several links to her. In fact, one sells the MP3 course I received an offer for on three CDs, at a higher cost than the MP3s.
I would be interested in hearing if anyone has tried this course and their opinion on it. I have almost ordered it a couple of times this weekend and I have a feeling that before the day is over, I may do so anyway.
There are several "subtle" things that you can do besides the obvious ones that you mentioned. Listen to how women whom you admire talk (not all genetic women talk like many women). Usually, women use words/phrases that are less demanding, maybe more like seeking seeking the other person's approval. Hand and body language is usually more apparent. Eye contact is more subtle. Women SMILE more than men - a slight, gentle, brief smile - especially to other women. Combining these things with those you mentioned into a "total package" will make your voice (whatever it is) less of an issue to whom you are speaking.
the only thing I can say is that the best way to improve your voice is to practice as much as possible the more practice the better you will get
Ok, so a higher pitch and cutting off that base resonance is a good start.
But then there is the issue of how to use the language. Women generally do not use the language the same way men use the language. The best you can do is to listen to women speak. Listen for the use of contractions (generally used less) and listen for how words are emphasized. It really is a different world.
tina
A couple of girl I know have used http://www.tgguide.com/female-voice.htm and it has made a huge difference in their voices in only a couple of weeks. You might give it a try
Many women's voices vary, I feel like I have a bit of an alto-ish voice for a GG. It depends on who I am talking to though, lol. If I am at work on the phone with a customer my voice gets softer and a little higher pitched. Also, make good eye contact and smile a lot. That always helps! :)
I got a voice tip from a Tgirl in my gender group. She said to buy a CD of your favorite female singer and every time you play it, sing along in the same octave as the singer. She said it worked well for her. I've been trying it with several girl singers, alto range is the best I can do but not for long periods of time. I'm still looking for a girl who sings in baratone. :tongueout
Ahh my favorite subject about TG'ing - the voice. :D
Here is some important stuff -
First, most voice stuff you run into is jam packed with filler. The info is in there, but by the time you get to it, you are confused...
The first thing to do is find the voice, then work on all the other stuff.
Fundamentals -
Once you find your female voice, you will probably not like the sound of it anymore than you like the sound of your male voice, when listening to either on a recording. During practicing things, you will feel really silly at first. Get over that.
The goal to having a female voice is to block off the bass resonance present in a male voice. You do this by constricting the lower part of the throat, talking out of the top part of the voice. "Softening" or speaking quiet won't do the trick.
To do this, you need to learn to control the throat muscles. Do things like take a deep breath, hock a loog, talk falsetto, breathe as if to warm your hands, gargle water while opening and closing the throat (careful not to choke), and while doing these, REALLY concentrate on the feel of your throat. Get to know how it feels when opened more than normal, less than normal, and the range of these muscles.
Once you have a feel for that, try to talk while constricting different parts of the throat. For me, if I partially close the lower 1/2 of the throat, it comes out feminine AND passable.
About "raising pitch" - Part of my own problem is I raise pitch by mistake and I sound like an old lady. Woman yes but not a 30 something year old woman. More like 70 something. YOu may find that once you learn to pinch off the low part of the voice to kill bass resonance, then raising pitch intentionally may not be necessary. At this stage, even if your voice is female, it might still be monotone femme.
"Great Erin, so THEN what?"
Ok then, once you have found your femme voice, it will take practice to perfect it, but by then you should have a good enough feel to know how to adjust things, the ball will be rolling and you will have a clue. YOu can then learn to make slight adjustments to give a "sing song" effect.
As far as speaking in a feminine manner with all the etiquette crap, Well as I am hardly a lady, I can't help you there. :heehee:
Final notes - You might like your femme voice, but I think it is in people's nature to hate their own voice, no matter how nice it is. And just my opinion but many a TS women's voices just seem "off" somehow, maybe cause once you know a woman is TS, it is like you are "looking" for the voice flaws, where otherwise you wouldn't suspect.
I have a neat trick to get people talking in a female tone right away, but I'm not very good at explaining it as some people interpret it differently and strain their vocal cords trying. :doh: Voice training should never be uncomfortable as damage to the vocal cords is irreversible.
A lot of people blow voice training into something massively complex but it's much simpler. As a guide, there are only four milestones to acquiring a female voice: controlling the throat muscles to have a female tone, speaking with proper resonance, returning the voice back to full power using the new resonance, and speech intonation. All the other small details that make a female voice will fall into place by themselves with practice.
CandiFLA on YouTube has some of the best and most accurate tips for finding one's female voice.
I bought the course I mentioned above yesterday. The instructor recommends buying a chromatic tuner so you can tell when you hit the correct pitch. I have one but it doesn't tell octaves, so I may buy a new one with a metronome. The "free" online tuner is actually a 30 day trial download.
I listened to the first set of lessons today at work. It sounds like fun. It's done by two women and one gets a bit giggly when the other uses suggestive phrases. I almost did a couple of exercises out loud in the cubicle farm and caught myself in time. :o
The first lessons consist of finding your pitch, then practicing examples given by both women in the proper pitch. It reminds me of language lesson cds.
Im a contrabass so there was no way for me to pull this off.
I just pretend to be a mute girl en femme. Just do that and write to speak.:D
The problem with buying some programs (for voice or anything) is that you get them and then it suggests all these other purchases, which they convieniently carry.
Just watch out for scams with any type of "how to" program.
They always have huge letters at the beginning "START RIPPING PEOPLE OFF OVERNIGHT!!!!"
They are usually really long ads, how the author discovered this secret by accident, very interesting, promising-looking, they discredit other methods that of course don't work, and mention things like "the one thing you MUST do to for this to work", fake testimonials, and the free gifts you will get (a $49.95 value) just for ordering, a money-back guarantee (of course you get to keep the free gifts), and they have just enough info to really entice you into wanting to buy.
They are like movie previews - all the best parts are explained, but not enough info to really make heads or tails of the full story. You get the full story and realise - "That's $xx.xx I will never get back"
Yeah you can tell I have never bought into "miracle" courses only to be disappointed and feel like I wasted my money, but never in relation to female voice/dressing/pass as a woman training stuff
Folks for real, you don't really have to spend a dime on voice training.
I mean if you really feel the need to buy something, Andrea jame's voice program is probably the best one I have seen. Melanie's one looks low-budget at best and she rambles so much that the main points are lost.
Need to measure your voice frequency? -
http://w5big.com/spectrogram.htm
If you need help setting that up, IM me and I can send instructions. This program is free, not a femme voice training thing pers se but does measure frequency of input.
I've been working on my voice for about a month now and what I need at this point is feedback from other people outside my social circle. It's difficult to find someone who can really give you an honest opinion about how you're doing, and people might wind up hiring the voice trainers on the CDs themselves just because they couldn't fill in the training CDs with enough information.
Raine and Erin are pretty spot on with what they described. I think the key is going to be practice, and tons of it, and maybe even feedback from other people. Might as well get used to talking to other people since you're going to be using it out in the open right? ;)
I will say only two words......higher pitch
Pitch doesn't have much to do with voice honestly. The most important thing to focus on is resonance. You want to remove the vibration from your voice by speaking from your head rather than your chest. There are many free resources on Youtube, so I would be hesitant to spend money on a course that appears far more complicated than it needs to be.
Charlotte
I dont pass so to try putting a feminine voice on,would just seem out of place,and a sort of parody in a monty python kinda way
How are the CDs you got Joanie? Any improvements? I think some of the girls here are anxious to hear your thoughts on them a couple of weeks after getting these. I'll be honest that when I first got them that they weren't much help for me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joanie_Shakti
Definitely agreed on the resonance part. I think watching your video helped me really put into context that the pitch really isn't the issue here - it's where the resonance is coming from.Quote:
Originally Posted by karmatic1110
I'd definitely second Charlotte's tip on looking for Youtube videos talking about voice - there's a whole bunch of them out there that are free that only take 10 minutes of your time at a time.
--- is this in the same manner that a male singer might use "head voice" (yes, it's a legitimate term among musicians) to raise the tenor of the voice without straining or deliberately trying to raise pitch, hit notes that aren't there for his range?Quote:
Originally Posted by karmatic1110
I am currently using the methods detailed below, available on several websites and championed by GenderLife and, separately, DeepStealth productions (Calpernia Addams and Andrea James). Further, I have access to a Voice Therapist that I will be contracting with, over the summer likely, to assist in this process to fine tune the end result. A disclaimer for this post, as a last thought, is that this method can get moderately to significantly technical with computer use. Soooo, if you're not all that comfortable with computers, you might just want to stop here, and choose a different method.
Remember, YMMV, experiences differ, and practice, Practice, PRACTICE!
Look here:
http://www.genderlife.com/products-page/voicetutor
Download this PDF from there:
http://www.genderlife.com/wp-content...icebook020.pdf
It's an instructional PDF all about what we're talking about in this thread.
The very first link will tell you to download the GRAM Spectrograph software (FREE - Windows PC), located here:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kis/schools/hum...ssr/gram50.zip
Once you download GRAM, then also save this Adobe/Flash keyboard interactive animation to help you find your proper starting pitches/notes:
http://www.genderlife.com/wp-content...h_keyboard.swf
Notice: This is basically a Shockwave/Flash file, so it does require that you have FLASH installed into your web browser to be able to load this virtual keyboard.
Copy down and save the Harvard Sentences presented on the first web page. Alternatively, and perhaps more comfortable for you, you may want to have a favorite book or two nearby, as reading from the text blindly is, I find, FAR trickier than just reading a continuous coherent thought.
You'll then want to look at this page to teach you how to setup and USE the Spectrograph software with your computer:
http://www.genderlife.com/products-p...he-spectrogram
Separately, you may want to invest in a small digital voice recorder, preferably one with a USB interface. I picked up a pretty decent one at BJ's (I'll post the brand later) for about 35$ and it has a built in USB-A Male plug that pops out of the player like a 'thumb drive'. You'll want to keep practicing again and again, and so you can record your practice directly to digital files, which can then be scanned with GRAM to see how well you've been doing.
Also, as was mentioned, CandiFLA does have some great videos on youtube, her channel is here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/candifla,
and there are many, many more.
Best of luck!
One thing is that you should not get feedback from other TG, unless they do not know who you are at all. Reason is, if your voice is better than theirs, they will say it passes, and if it is not, they will say it ain't good.
The best way to test it is do what I do - Talk to guys on RPG's or other things where they assume you are some woman and see the kinds of fantasies they will spill, things they would NOT tell a GM.
Oh gyod one time I did that and I started laughing and I guess he thought it sounded like a woman laugh cause even tho he said for me to stop laughing, he didn't say, "hey wait, are you some guy?"
If he had, I would have went - "No dahlin, I am a TRAHNNY.
That bears repeating. And falsetto sounds false. Sounding like the Bee Gee's isn't the way to go. And a faint voice is difficult to hear. Having to repeat yourself would not be fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephenie S