(i hope this doesnt come off as rude) is it bad that as a trans girl, i get extremely jealous that afab peoples voices change when they go on testosterone, but mine will never unless i go through months of complicated training that i hardly ever understand? and while im on the topic, do any of the trans feminine mods or followers know of any resources that helped them with their voices? ive seen tons of videos, but they all say pretty much the same stuff and none of it ever makes any sense.
It is completely normal to feel jealous of others for what is medically possible for them and not for you (I feel for you, my natural range is around Johnny Cash), but it’s important to remember that everyone has unique struggles and circumstances.
For raising your pitch I have a couple of things to recommend:
1) try to find your natural singing range. This is a good video to try to sing along to and try to find where you can sing along comfortable to. Once you go high enough you should notice your voice jump to a much higher pitch that sounds a lot harsher and fuzzier than your natural range. That is called your falsetto. You want to sing in your natural range and not your falsetto.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fCxmDUl8__U
2) once you have identified your singing range, you can find your speaking range. You should notice that where you’re most comfortable, your voice is really clear, then the higher you go, the more strained your voice is. The goal of this is to raise how high the really clear part of your range is.
3) the most important thing to do is to practice as much as you can. The voice is a musical instrument that you can gain skill in just like a saxophone or piano. It is also a muscle that gets stronger the more you work it, so you want to practice, but you also need to make sure you’re doing good practice. Anytime I am alone, I will practice.
4) Good practice means moving outside of your comfort zone! Your practicing is going to sound bad. That is the only type of effective practice, because if you only try what is already in your range, your range will never grow. So don’t feel bad if your voice sounds scratchy because that means you are getting better at hitting that pitch.
Specific practicing techniques:1) practice “long tones” which means you start at a comfortable note and hold it for 8 counts (one mississippi, two mississippi…). Then move up to the next note and hold it for 8 counts. Do this until you reach your limit. It is easy to hit a high note for a short amount of time, but hard to hold it. When you do this, the tendency is to do this very quietly, but you need to take a big breath and have it be loud. If you don’t have enough air or confidence your note will fizzle. You are not yelling! If you get some harsh distortion on your voice, that is too loud. If you yell too much, you will damage your voice.
2) Read anything out loud higher than you are comfortable speaking. After a while, this will become habit and will become your natural speaking tone. If that is still deeper than you want, repeat this. It does not matter what you say, but you need to say it, as much as you can. Read a book out loud, read tumblr posts, read articles. The more you speak the faster you will notice differences.
3) Find a video or podcast to listen to with a woman’s voice that you like. Listen to this one sentence at a time, pause it, then repeat the sentence (also integrating a higher range like in example 2). Not only will this help with reaching higher pitches, but it will also help you identify vocal mannerisms to imitate. It is important that you do this with many different people, so you can decide which mannerisms you like and which one’s you’ll ignore.
WHEN PRACTICING:Like any muscle you are working out, you want to make sure you warm up and cool down or you could seriously damage your voice. Start out easy around your natural range and finish out around there.
Drink lots and lots of water! You will get dehydrated and you want to make sure you don’t damage your voice. Have a bottle of water with you, like any other workout.
Here is a more specific approach if you find that you are able to work through these and want something more:
https://m.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/1ske7b/mtf_voice_training_regimen/?utm_source=mweb_redirect&compact=true
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