Written for the Transgender Community
With Free Internet Voice Training Resource List
By Diana Montrose
Webmaster of Donna's
Ezine
| TGGuide.com Webmaster's Note: If you're transgendered and want to develop a more feminine voice, this is the starting point for you. Whether you're transsexual, crossdresser or otherwise identify yourself as transgender, there is a wealth of information contained both within Diana's article and in the free online voice training resources listed at the end of this article. Many transgendered people struggle with voice. With work, most can succeed in attaining a reasonably passable feminine voice. It does take work, perhaps a lot of work; but the rewards are well worth it. Bookmark this page and begin your journey to finding your voice. |
Free Female Voice Training Resource Links
How to Develop a Female VoiceNothing gets you read faster than a voice that doesn't match your appearance. Many gender folk dress up and look like goddesses... until they open their mouths. Suddenly, in spite of the grace and curves, they turn into truck drivers or lumberjacks right before your eyes. Clothes may make the man, but it is voice that makes the woman.
Whether you are a cross-dresser or transsexual, developing a truly FEMALE voice - not just a feminine one - is of paramount concern.
Like most, it is simply softening the voice without raising your pitch. But there is more than sounding like a woman. You need to talk like a woman.
In this article, I will share with you how I did it and provide all the steps you need to find your own female voice.
Ok I haven't scientifically referenced any work here, or read any papers on the human voice these are my own observations of what constitutes traits of a female and male voice.
Technically upon male puberty the average male voice in terms of pitch drops on average one octave in range, that's 8 keys as the term suggests. The female voice in puberty also drops, a little known fact, hence why most women don't sound like children. On average any person has a 3 1/2 octave range of voice, some with double that, in rare cases, and men of course have falsetto, but it's not congruently matched to their upper voice range, hence if you go high pitched and then slide into falsetto, you notice a large 'jump up'.
With pitch in mind, you are well in range to get that female voice. I was told the closer you are to the end of your puberty or during it, the more likely you are to attain the voice you would have had anyway. However do not let this dishearten you, it is entirely possible t develop a passable voice. Hormones, such as estrogens, and etc. do not affect voice at all.
Characteristics of the Male VoiceThings such as the way words are pronounced and what words are used are more to do with vocabulary and personal dialect (words and traits personal to your speech). These will be dealt with in a short section in this particular article.
Characteristics of the Female VoiceThese are things you can pick up without having to change your voice. They won't make you pass as female obviously but once your female voice is attained, you will find this very helpful.
Consider how a woman says she needs to go to the bath or restroom? Usually, she says: "I just got to pop into the restroom" sometimes, maybe 'toilet' or ‘bathroom’, but seldom will you hear a woman saying: "I'm off for a piss" or "I'm off to the crapper". Obviously women sometimes do express to use the toilet in such ways but usually not. Why?
Not always for eloquence or politeness but because swear words are quite 'hard' words in their sound. "Shit" and "Fuck" have hard sounds. Women do swear but in most part, they do not swear, as the hard word sound does not go with the general soft voice. If I swear, I will an expletive, because it match’s my personality.
Also dialect, think of words that are local to your area, and if you use them a lot, try to use a lot of standard English, oddly - social conditioning largely allows men to use dialect and broad accent more than women do. Your accent will have a part to play, but if you have a strong northern accent, do not try and make it sound like South-Eastern accents, putting on an accent and a new voice will not work very well, without a huge amount of practice, and will sound doubly false.
The essence here is - do not start talking 'posh' but consider the words you use, you may already, and the way you say words.
Cough, Laugh, Sneeze, Clear Throat, Shout, Scream, Giggle, Sighing, Yawning.... if you have a deep voice, all of these and more will sound male. One aspect to consider is all these involuntary actions and amplified voice situations, if you are in a loud environment, can cause problems. These involuntary actions are not something you can think about so sneezing for example, has to sound female, not with a big deep "Accchoooooo" or very deep laugh, a very deep throat clearance and etceteras. These are all things that need to be feminized.
Body language is another subject, I'll need to observe myself to see what makes my body language female, but if you have a female voice that is 100% passable, but masculine body language, it can look 'strange'. This can be from the way you walk, the way you gesticulate when you talk, when you run, the way you eat, drink, turn around, search for something lost - everything, you begin to see that this is not a small amount to pick up. Young girls are usually encouraged by their mothers and sometimes fathers to extend their natural feminine body language, where as boys are encouraged to be a little less graceful, a bit brash, which again is natural for little boys. Here are some body language ‘secrets’:
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Where to get more examples? Pick your favorite TV program and observe the difference. ‘Will and Grace’ is a great program to watch and learn the difference if body language. From a local observation, just get out in public and observe!
A lot of men when talking and indeed some women don't move their mouths very much and they have very little movement, one aspect that will help is to begin 'opening your mouth' and actually allowing for more movement from your jaw as you say words. In an abstract sense you open/close your mouth to the degree of the word you are pronouncing, e.g. if you say "animal" with consciously moving your mouth to say the word, you will find your mouth moves as you say it to almost encapsulate the word as if it was a 'shape'. It sounds very abstract but say a word with three syllables or more (e.g.: el-e-phant, an-i-mal) and see how your mouth moves. You can see your voice is treating that word as if it was a shape, expressing it.
If you can talk with moving your mouth to the words in an acceptable way you
find you don't mumble, you let more air in and this has a lot of good impacts
such as allowing softer tone, and raised pitch, and generally seems to help the
voice.
Your voice may sound quite hard, combined with the first technique, soften the voice, don't say words in a 'hard' manner, just start to speak softly, don't fall into the trap of thinking of the stereotypical homosexual effeminate voice. Just soften it, as if your padding the words up all cuddly but not too cuddly or it will sound over-done. Make sure you combine steps 1 and 2 at the same time.
To begin, as I looked back over the
path I had taken, I discovered seven important tools for developing a feminine
voice. Six of them work on the femininity but the seventh is the "secret" that
actually makes one SOUND female. I'll describe each briefly, then cover them all
in greater detail. By name, the seven tools are Pitch, Resonance, Dynamic Range,
Annunciation, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Body English.
Most people assume that the primary difference between men's and women's voices is Pitch. But we shall see that the actually difference in pitch between the sexes in minimal. In fact, the overlap of range between the sexes allows for almost ANY individual to fall well within accepted norms of pitch.
What do Susanne Pleshette, Marline Detrich, Cher, and Bea Arthur have in common? They all have VERY low voices! In fact, they have voice LOWER in pitch than most of the male population. However, we would never mistake them for men! When women have low voices they are not considered masculine. Rather, their voices are referred to as "husky". Laura Hutton is my favorite low voiced woman.
How can they get away with that? The difference between the average male voice and the average female voice is only about 1/2 octave. It is not the pitch that makes them sound female, but the Resonance!
Because each of us has at least a one and a half octave range to their voice and most of us have two octaves or more, there is a lot of overlap between the pitches of the two sexes if there is only a 1/2 octave AVERAGE difference. That means there is just half an octave higher that some women can go that no men can and only a half an octave lower that some men can go that no women can.
My voice now is only 2 or 3 notes
higher on the scale than it was before I started. But the audible impact is
quite difference. That is because it is not how HIGH you pitch your voice, but
where you pitch it FROM that makes all the difference! Once you get your voice
coming from the right place, it doesn't really matter what pitch it is at all.
And the added bonus is, with the Resonance, you get 2 or 3 notes of increased
pitch as well.
Resonance is the real secret of this method. Resonance is the modulation of whatever pitch you have. It puts the envelope on the voice that takes the pitch and assigns it Timbre.
What is Resonance? Imagine an orchestra. Now imagine the same not being played by a violin, a trumpet, and an oboe. They all have different sounds, even though they are all playing the same note. This is because the tone they play is "modulated" differently. Each has its own unique Resonance.
In a trumpet, that resonance is created in the coils. It is created in the body of the violin or in a cello. That body is a chamber in which the sound can vibrate, mixing and intermixing to create complex wave forms with many striking and identifying harmonics.
That chamber is like our own voice box. Men have a larger voice box. That's what makes their Adam's apple larger and their voices add more low-end resonance. Women have a smaller voice box and as a result have less low-end resonance. So, in a sense, men have MORE harmonics than women. This is fortunate for those in the masculine gender who wish to be perceived in the feminine. The whole trick is to learn to us LESS of your voice. It’s not something you have to add to sound female, but something you need to suppress. The problem is, that when men go into a falsetto, they suppress ALL of the harmonics, resulting in that silly high-pitched voice that is surely a dead give-away.
Let's try an experiment to drive the point home. Put your finger of one hand on the top of your larynx, at the top of your Adam's apple. Place the fingers of your other hand at the very bottom of your larynx, below the Adam's apple. Now, speak aloud in your normal masculine voice. You will note that both the top AND bottom of the larynx vibrate almost equally as you speak.
Keeping your fingers in place, go into a falsetto and speak. You will note that there is hardly ANY vibration in either the top OR bottom! The exercises we are going to learn will allow you to create a voice that vibrates ONLY at the bottom and NOT at the top. This effectively cuts the part of the voice box used in half and thereby loses the lowest of the harmonics, leaving almost EXACTLY the same range of harmonics as a genetic female voice.
Exercise:
The female voice I've discovered feels like it sits "behind" your normal speaking voice. After I had used it for a while, I found there were two easy to get to this place - a place your voice does not usually go while you are speaking. The first way is with falsetto voice and the second way is by gargling.
A. Falsetto:
Start with your highest falsetto. If you sound like a cartoon character with big round ears that lives in Anaheim, you've got it! Now take that voice and bring the pitch down as low as you can WITHOUT BREAKING YOUR VOICE. You see, if you break your voice it will "come out front" again, and you'll be using the full voice box for modulation.
Take your voice down as low as you can go in falsetto. You will notice that neither the top nor bottom of your larynx is vibrating very much, if at all. Now, before I explain what to do once you get to that spot, let's examine the other method of arriving there. If you try both methods, one will work best for you. Also, by trying both, you will have a better sense - a "cross reference" of where your voice needs to be.
B. Gargling:
Just go back in your throat the way you do when you gargle and make that standard gargling sound. When you do, you will automatically tighten up your throat. You will find that your voice is resonating from exactly the same place either with the lowest falsetto or the gargling. However, with the gargling, you can actually feel both the top and bottom of your larynx vibrating.
The point you want to reach for this voice is the center between where you put your voice to gargle and the lowest falsetto you have. Some people like to do character voices for fun.
As I mentioned before, the first time I found this voice I hit it by accident. Then I got stuck. So if you try this exercise and are not living full-time as a woman, make sure you have an hour or so to find your way back to male voice just in case.
Now, what you are actually learning to do is develop one set of the muscles on your larynx while not using the others at all. This is a tough trick - kind of like wiggling your ears or patting your head while you rub your tummy. It takes practice - LOT'S of practice.
But don't practice too much right at the start. Once you find the voice it is such a magical experience that you want never to come back. But you will find that using the lower set of muscles to do all the work leads to hoarseness at first. This is your body's way of telling you that you should knock off for a while.
I found that during the first week I used this voice, I could only go about half an hour or so before I got hoarse. Then, I had the good sense to rest my voice. Just like doing exercises for the body, you don't want to do too much too fast of you will injure yourself.
For me, it took about six months to fully develop my voice to the point I could use it all day long. Then, it took another six months to fully develop loudness and dynamic range. But these things did come with practice and patience. I imagine that eventually, the other muscles at the top might atrophy if, like me, you just don't use them at all. However, for those of you switching back and forth, both will stay in tone and like me, even now after four years, I can still call up the old voice if I have to. For me, that's about once a year when I need to demonstrate to a friend that it is possible to do this.
I can't tell you exactly what's going on physically, nor can I guarantee you won't cause yourself problems. I can merely say that for me, I have been using this voice for my whole life with no apparent ill effects other then answering the phone and being called “miss’ or ‘madam’.
Having covered Resonance, and discounted Pitch, its time to move on to the other five steps that can feminize your voice. Remember, Resonance creates a FEMALE voice and these other well-known steps are useful in FEMINIZING whatever voice you have.
Dynamic Range describes the difference between the highest highs and the lowest lows that a person uses while speaking. Men use a very narrow dynamic range, even though they are quite capable of extending that range. It is simply a matter of training, not physiology. In contrast, women use a much WIDER dynamic range, which is what gives their voices more of a "sing/song" effect.
When I first started using my new female voice, the muscles were only developed enough to create a very monotone sound. In fact, it took me six months to get a good Dynamic Range.
As I mentioned earlier, Dynamic Range is the difference between the highest pitch and the lowest pitch used in conversation. Women use this range to put emphasis into their conversation. It brings extra meaning to the words beyond their normal definitions by putting a different "spin" on them.
Men use a different technique for emphasis: they get louder or softer within a narrow range of tones. So, in conversation, a man will "punch" some words and hold back others. In this manner they "make their point". In contrast, women will rise and lower in tone while keeping roughly the same amplitude or loudness.
This is a striking difference in speech patterns and is a key identifier of a masculine or feminine personality. Keep in mind that masculine women will adopt the loudness approach in monotone, and the feminine man will rise and fall in tonality with even amplitude.
You'll notice the difference in the way women speak when you call them on the phone. If you are a man and call a company getting the female receptionist, her voice will be up in the scale, high in note so as to be cheerful and non-threatening. If she hears a man calling her she will stay there at that range of pitch. But if you are a woman calling in and get the same receptionist, she will answer the phone the same way, but as soon as she hears that it is a woman calling her, she will lower her tonal range.
This happens because men control the power in the world, especially in business. As a result, as a woman, unless you are very assertive by nature, you don't want to appear threatening. Men in business compete with men and also with women who are threatening. However, since women have to stick together to get anything done in a male world, they must form a conspiracy.
When men in business get together its a competition, when women in business get together its a conspiracy. And this difference in approach and status is reflected in the higher or lower tonal range that a woman adopts depending upon the gender of the other party. Similarly, if a woman IS assertive and using amplitude to punch her emphasis, a non-assertive woman will keep her voice high to show she is not a threat.
Now, this is easily seen in women because they naturally use a wider dynamic range. But have you ever noticed how a man's voice goes up a few notes whenever he fears a superior is angry with him?
Now another aspect of Dynamic range is "stair step tonalities". What I mean by this is that in every group of several words a woman will string together in a sentence, usually no two are spoken at the same pitch. This is what makes women's voices sound so "sing song". In fact, they ARE singing!
Sometimes the stair steps go down to lower into that conspiratorial tone. Other times they go up to raise the emotional stakes. Often they rise and fall like sine waves to rush up under a phrase, then retreat like a wave on the sand. Speaking in stair step tonalities are best learned by listening to others, but it is learned, not intrinsic. Just like Dynamic Range, it is a function of conditioning rather than biology.
So, Dynamic Range is largely a masculine/feminine issue rather than a male/female one. How to learn it, however, is best covered in our next area.
Enunciation is the way you pronounce your words. Just as one might do a dialect, there is a female dialect that transcends languages and cultures.
Enunciation describes the shape into which words are formed. Men lean toward denotation rather than connotation. In other words, men get the job done as quickly as possible with the most focus. When speaking they hit the edges of words like square waves, cutting each one like they were chopping carrots.
In contrast, femininity is more connotation oriented. Women are not as concerned with the meaning of a word so much as its context, and that context is expressed in a more flowing, graceful manner. Women will round the edges of their words to avoid cliffs and walls.
Believe it or not, the best source I've found as an example of this is with Valley Girls. Val Speak for girls puts an envelope on the words that sing songs with stair steps, rounds the words and flows the hidden agenda of meaning in the background context.
I suggest that you rent either Whoopi Goldberg's stand up comedy routine on video tape or the movie "Valley Girls". Both of these have the feminine dialect down pat.
It is MUCH easier to go overboard to an extreme and then tone it down than to try to build up from where you are now. There is so much initial embarrassment trying to speak female AND each step requires addition work and additional habits to be broken. You learn one level of success then have to unlearn that to get to the next. But if you jump all the way to the extreme and use that, it will begin to average out with the annunciation you are using now and will tone itself down until it is right on the mark for normal conversation as today's woman.
Now, I referred above to the "feminine dialect". But it is much more than that. In fact, the enunciation and dynamic range of femininity is applied to every language and every culture in the world. The words and grammar may change, but the connotation of the feminine meaning is a universal language that can be understood from woman to woman in times and worlds apart.
Still, it is not stilted or defined. In fact, it is quite flexible. Women do not live a single role, but many, as mother, wife, career woman, and friend. As such, she plays variations of the feminine dialect depending upon the role without ever losing the femininity. This can be accomplished by realizing that the feminine dialect is not one thing but several blended together. As a woman shifts from role to role, she uses the same tools, but with different emphasis depending upon the situation.
The voice that I use with my girlfriends is different than the voice I use when in other events. Get away from the binary and free yourself from definition. Go with the flow, be flexible, and play with variations on a theme.
Yes there are masculine and feminine words. In our culture, certain words are almost exclusively reserved for males and others for females.
Think about the phrase, "I Got a pain in my gut." Who would say that, a man or a woman? A woman might say, "I have a pain in my stomach."
The point is, that some words are more masculine or feminine that others. Part of this again derives from the brokering of power. For example, a man usually "wants" something while a woman "would like" something. "Want" means "lack" and implies "need" which further implies the right to have. This reflects the aggressive side of the power equation.
On the other hand, "would like" states a preference, not an intent and therefore runs the idea up the flagpole to see if anyone is against it before acting. This reflects the submissive side of the power equation.
You can notice the difference in the way men and women will order at the speaker of a drive-through fast food restaurant. A man will say, "I want a Big Mac.", whereas a woman will say, "I'd like a salad, please."
Here’s the basic secret: Talk like a passive victim. Ask and don’t demand!
Now another thing men often do is slur. Make your words clear, clean and complete.
Being masculine or feminine has a lot to do with brokering power. When one forms words into sentences, the ORDER of words as well as modifiers change the position of power of the speaker.
Grammar deals with sentence structure. Keeping on the Power Equation concept, men are supposed to be assertive in our society, women submissive. Women can have moods, but not opinions. Men might say they we’re "going to do" something, but women would say: "I'm thinking of doing something.”
Now, I use the terms "men" and "women" because those are the standards for our society by sex. But it is really a matter of masculine vs. feminine. It is the issue of cooperation vs. conflict.
But first you must go to the extreme and then tone it back. Keep in mind that there is hardly a woman alive who does all these things. But by using most of them regularly in different combinations, you can have your overall speech pattern fall more within the feminine range than it does now.
Body English is they way you move while you speak. In fact, it has an actual impact of how the voice itself will sound. By using the proper Body English while you speak, you can improve the femininity of your voice - even on the phone!
Body English supports voice and voice supports Body English. If a feminine voice is like a song, feminine Body English is like a dance. When you put the song and the dance together, they create harmonies between them that underscore and counterpoint, making the entire process a symphony.
Many gender folk using the phone get so nervous they freeze up physically and it can be heard loud and clear in their voice. But if you move in rhythm to your thoughts, your voice will follow. Even on the phone you will sound more feminine and more human!
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