Heya! Sorry if this gets asked a lot or never lol. I’m NB (gender neutral and kinda xenogender?) and hoping to train for a more androgynous sort of voice. My natural voice is more bassy and raspy. Do any of y’all have experience with this?
Are there any good like … Phone apps or programs that are good to practice with? Like my dream would be something I could talk into that would analyze pitch and tone and would give suggestions. I don’t know if something like that exists but I’m open to anything right now
I love my trans comrades!
Here’s a getting started guide from the /r/transvoice discord:
Broadly the two main gendering qualities to a voice are weight and size. With voice training the general idea is to:
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ear train: learn to recognize when you weight is heavy vs light, when size is large vs small
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mimic and experiment: learn to produce voices that are different weights and sizes, and esp. how to balance those to produce a typical feminine voice (suitably light and small)
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practice: just keep listening and recognizing when you’re slipping up and to adjust your voice back into the feminine range, over time and lots of persistent practice, this habituates and becomes your voice!
For exploring weight:
For size:
- https://clyp.it/jdquw5ac
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW8X2nXexQs (this video has some pedagogical flaws, but is still good for listening / experimenting to some extent)
For more about the balance of weight and size:
Videos to help guide expectations for beginners:
- on goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYSxobwWypI
- on daily practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fylIX28mlyY
For beginners it can also be helpful to explore more achievable lower-pitch feminine voices:
To ear train, it’s commonly recommended to listen to and “play along” with Selene’s clips:
Note: as you experiment or do any voice training exercise, make sure to pay close attention to:
- how it sounds to you as you do it,
- how it sounds when you record it and play it back for yourself,
- how others report they hear it, and also
- how it feels (in your body) when you produce the different sounds, keeping mental note so you can reproduce the voice if you need.
Experiments to try:
- using a pitch detector, sing a note and chant a word while maintain the same pitch, and change resonance/size from dark/large to bright/small while keeping pitch the same
- using a pitch detector, keep pitch steady and practice going from a heavy to a light weight without changing pitch
- mimic a large voice, like Patrick from Spongebob, or the Giant from Jack in the Beanstalk
- mimic a small voice, like when you talk to a baby or a cute puppy or animal, or accessible overfull childish voices, like Ash Ketchum from Pokemon or Dexter from Dexter’s Lab
- mimic a heavy voice
- mimic a light voice
- try producing an underfull voice intentionally
- try producing an overfull voice intentionally
- try going from full masc to overfull
- from full masc to underfull
- from full masc to full fem
- from full fem back to full masc
- from underfull to full fem
- from overfull to full fem
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Thank you! This is very comprehensive and thought out. I’ll look into all of this!
of course! If you have any questions, let me know!
I’ve voice trained for over a year now, here’s a sample of my voice from 4 months ago, my voice seems to pass in social situations and on the phone, but I still only hear like a young gay man when I listen to my own clip (yay dysphoria, I guess). I’m always keen to get critical feedback on my voice, I don’t like it and feel I need to work on it more, but it’s getting harder to.
I’m happy to listen to and critique voice clips you record, if you ever need that (this offer goes to anyone, btw).
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
Link 4:
Link 5:
Link 6:
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Also, thank you for posting this. It inspired me to start voice training again. Its hard. And getting a femme voice sucks but will be really helpful for me. So thank you! I finally got a recording of me kinda hitting my target voice!
I’m not even fully sure what kind of voice I’m going for yet, something androgynous, but I’ll work hard if you will! It’ll be a journey for both of us but I’m sure you’ll make progress and make yourself proud.
You’ll get there and I believe in you!
I’ll work hard if you will!
I did like an hour of training today, im proud of myself! I both spoke to myself in “natural conversation” and read from a text. Interestingly reading from a text used to be femmier than conversation but now the reverse is true.
I would be happy to keep up with you on voice training and encourage each other! I bet youll find a good andro voice that suits you! We will achieve
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Theres an app on fdroid called audio spectrum analyzer. I have used it for a littoe voice training but i fell off. It wont tell you explicitly tone and pitch and all that, but 2d mode i found helpful for training and differentiating between pitch and resonance. You will have to interpret what youre looking at tho, it wont do any of thay for you and just gives the raw output from the mic.
On desktop, the melda productions free suite includes a similar plugin that can operate inside a DAW (there’s free ones out there) and can analyze the mic input.
I hadn’t thought of just using my DAW but that’s a great idea. I could even just play around with pitch shifter plugins on recordings of myself and try practicing that way
Mind you, pitch shifting will give you a target frequency to aim for, but the resonances/overtones won’t (relatively) change by pitch shifting. So you might still need additional training for that.
I’ll check it out! I already do audio stuff so I’m ok with reading a spectrum analyzer.
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this is the way!
Thank you so much! I’ll check this out and see if it works for me.
