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You may be frustrated at times but fear not. All of your hard work will likely pay off. As Andrea James puts it in her Finding Your Female Voice video, voice traning is like learning a musical instrument. (In fact, transgender voice training may share more in common with countertenor singing techniques than not.) These things take a lot of dedication and practice. You can do it. So many people have proved it is possible for everyday people such as you and I. So take a listen to the samples on this page give it the old college try.
You can do this.
Voicepack
You have the option of listening to all the MP3 samples below by clicking on the links. But, if you want to save me some bandwidth and download the entire voice-only pack in one swoop you can download this:
Voicepack (2,053 KB)
Preparation
What do you need to get started here? Not much really:
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An MP3 Player.
To listen to the voice samples use something like
WinAMP or even
Windows Media Player.
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A microphone or tape recorder.
A mic is very very handy because you'll be needing to record
yourself. Built-in laptop mics are terrible because they pick
up too much noise---get a cheapo mic at your local computer store.
You will need some recording software, but your computer usually
comes with Windows Sound Recorder or the equivalent. (Try
online
software sites if you need software.)
A tape recorder works just as well.
- Patience. This takes forever to learn. It took me about 3 weeks to figure things out but I think I sounded like crapola. I still think I have a long ways to go but I'm getting a sound now that doesn't make me cringe. Please have patience and just work at it. It is possible.
Terms
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Pitch.
How high or low a sound is. Click on the sample below to hear a
series of three tones that demonstrate a low pitch, a middle pitch,
and a high pitch:
Pitches (48 KB)
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Croak.
For lack of a better way to describe it, "croak" I believe is an
element of your overall voice tone. It has no real pitch and is
more noise than anything else. People often use this at the
beginning and ends of sentences.
Croak (23 KB)
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Resonance.
The amount of clarity, brightness, sharpness, or other such words
to describe the texture of the tone. Click on the below samples
which demonstrate varying amounts of resonance in two differnt voice
modes:
Boy Mode: Round (14 KB) | Normal (19 KB) | Nasal (17 KB)
Girl Mode: Round (13 KB) | Normal (16 KB) | Nasal (14 KB)
What to listen for
So what exactly constitutes a female voice? There are so many different kinds of voices out there there is an example of just about every type including females that sound male-ish and males that sound female-ish. But if you ask me, there are some general things which I believe:
Notice pitch isn't everything! You want to try to smooth out your vowels and consonants. Look to make your sentences softer rather than filled with raw power. Having a smile in your voice instead of using a very monotone one helps so much.
typical male voices typical female voices
- More resonance
- Less roundness
- Lower pitch
- Less croak
- Less pitch variation
- Shorter sentences
- Louder sounds
- Less resonance
- More roundness
- Higher pitch
- More croak
- More pitch variation
- Longer sentences
- Softer sounds
The general technique
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- The general technique I use calls for relaxation first and foremost. You should be calm and try to speak with a little bit softer volume. You should be able to speak normally and freely in your natural voice. You will notice this is filled with more resonance and lower pitches.
- Since we're working to get a slightly higher, rounder sound out of your voice we need to raise your pitch a little. Just a little! This does a few things: 1) obviously you have a higher pitch (duh!), 2) lower-pitched resonance begins to drop out, and 3) the overall quality of the voice becomes smoother.
- If you keep raising the pitch you'll reach a point where your voice "breaks" into a falsetto mode. It's weird because it's like your voice goes from a normal tone to a very round tone. This is most definitely not what we want, so you will have to find a pitch that's a little lower.
- Your ideal pitch doesn't have to be all that high, instead you just have to make sure there is more roundness than strong male resonance.
- At that new point you begin to add in a little more croak and nasal tone to balance the roundness. And if you add greater variation to the pitch (more "sing-songy" instead of "monotone") you'll pretty much have the basic form down!
One of the secrets of doing this is to stay relaxed and soft. When you do that your vocal folds/chords are a lot more flexible and they'll last longer too. Also, keeping your voice wet with water is very important. You should give yourself periodic rest breaks where you can drink a few sips. Finally, try not to clear your throat no matter what you do. The two most damaging things you can do to your voice are 1) clearing your throat and 2) whispering!
I also have an older technique which I found was generally difficult for other people to do. This involved:
- Start in Boy Mode voice.
- Relax your vocal chords as much as possible.
- Try to produce a smooth gentle tone.
- Morph into a croak.
- Raise the pitch of the croak just a little bit.
- Relax your voice again slowly while maintaining pitch.
- You should now be able to balance out the roundness in your voice.
Miscellaneous voice samples
Because this site has gone through so many changes from its original posting in 1999 I figured you might want to hear the evolution of my voice. My initial attempts tended to be very constricted and nasal-heavy. I think that's because in order to force out more croak in the voice that begins to overpower the roundness qualities. Nowadays I try to do more roundness in general and reserve more croak only for the ends of sentences.
- 1999.??.??: Original 1999 site: Listen (57 KB)
- 2001.??.??: Old household phone greeting: Listen (36 KB)
- 2002.03.19: Audio diary: Listen (64 KB)
- 2002.04.11: Audio diary in the car: Listen (60 KB)
- 2002.06.05: Audio diary: Listen (67 KB)
- 2002.12.13: Audio diary with boy voice: Listen (48 KB)
- 2003.08.11: Very low boy voice: Listen (34 KB)
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