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I have tried to have a go at lightening my voice but I've spent many years with the one I've got and any attempt to sound feminine has a less-than-satisfactory result which is also often quite comical in its ineptitude, so I've rather given up. Have changed your voice, do you want to, have you too tried and failed?
Just curious
Becca
My natural voice is not all that deep, luckily. I raise the pitch by about an octave, soften the tone, and use my larynx less. I can carry on a conversation quite comfortably, and speaking in my female voice for several hours comes naturally. As Alison points out, increasing the volume is often detrimental. Coughs are very hard to control unless you can sense it coming.
The mistake some crossdressers make is to go for a falsetto, only to end up sounding like Mickey Mouse.
@jacquelinelarkspur As we discussed, this is exactly what I do.
Not having used it in public very often though I have no real idea how effective it really is
@rebeccabaxter I voted other as I would like to sound more feminine as Cassie but it's not going to be easy for a lot of different reasons. I think both psychological and physiological barriers have to be overcome. Hugs, Cassie
@cassiesccd I used to have a soft voice and considered gay so I was forced to be though and talk loud in order to show my masculinity :/.
My voice is a dead giveaway and is maybe the biggest reason I don't pass. I've practiced with some YouTube videos and it's helped. But there's a lot of work to do. I expect I'll need a voice coach to develop a passable female voice.
/EA
@emilyalt Emily, you will make it, you've made it this far and I've got lots of confidence in you girl!
It's a lot easier than many think, it just takes time and practice.
Hugs,
Lauren
Thanks for the vote of confidence Lauren! I know I can do it. I think it'll take a long time though.
/EA
@reallylauren Funny how the world works Lauren. I went to my regular support group meeting a few nights ago and they had a speech therapist that specializes in helping trans patients. It was a godsend. Her methods made sense. A first for me. She said most of her patients can develop a passable voice in 8 months and she had one of her patients with her to prove it. I plan to sign up!
/EA
@emilyalt That is so great Emily! It will make such a positive difference for you as a trans woman! I really don't think I could work where I do, as the site supervisor for security at the building's security desk, if my voice didn't match the lady that people see. I rarely get clocked anymore, when I get on the bus every morning I always say good morning to the driver and to a few other riders, they hear a woman's voice and accept that is who they see. My voice muscles and larynx have become so used to speaking that way that it has become my natural voice.
Hugs,
Lauren
This is one of the things on the decision tree. I’m naturally a bit bassy. have started researching, we’ll see how it goes.
Hi everyone
My voice depends on how much I contract my diaphragm, but in general I have a tone of voice very similar to that of the Italian actress Mariangela Melato (General Kala) in the 1980 film Flash Gordon.
XOXO from Italy 🇮🇹
Greta 🏳️⚧️❤️
@rebeccabaxter I found slowing down my speech, softening my voice, and raising my pitch slightly gives me a feminine voice, enough to carry on a conversation without issues when out and about.
We've had a voice teacher come a couple of times. I can change my voice for short conversations; longer ones I can probably be read.
For first order effects, I use a three pronged approach. First I raise my voice half an octive. It's still within my range, so I have the ability to modulate my voice without going into falsetto. There is a woman who does traffic on New York radio whose natural tone is only one note up from my natural tone. But talking up that one note is not enough to make me sound feminine.
Second, which is probably the hardest, is to open the throat as I talk. This is what they tell you when you sing, to do so from the chest and not from the throat. This is easier at the slightly higher pitch and elimates the "male buzz" in the throat.
The third approach is to make your voice sound smaller. Many people do this by talking softer, but when someone can't hear you, you talk louder and lose the feminine quality. What I was taught is to push part of your voice into your nasal cavity. You don't want to sound extremely nasal like Barbara Steisand or Fran Drescher. But if you push somewhere between 50 and 75 percent of your voice through you nose, you will have a smaller space for the sound to resonate and your voice will sound smaller and more feminine. And doing this, you can still get volume without losing the feminine quality. Play with it until you find a good mix.
I can usually do this for a short conversation.
Second order effects would be to talk more legato (elongate vowels, let the words flow smoothly from one to another) instead of staccato (sharp breaks between words), modulate the tone as you speak (don't overdo it, but use it to add emotion or emphasis), word choice (for example, in a restaurant, a woman will often say "I'd like ..." instead of "I'll have ...") , often talking around the subject or going off on tangents and then coming back, and using your hands when you talk. Some of these I still need to work on, especially in longer conversations.
@alison-anderson Thank you for the excellent advice. I love the voice of that woman doing the traffic updates! I have often thought that I would love to have a voice like hers.
I speak in a feminine voice all day long every day, it has become my natural voice, I don't even have to think about it, as soon as I start talking that is my voice. Now, let me clarify that I am a trans woman, also an intersex female who's voice has always been soft. I have no Adams apple and have been able to speak this way since I was a teenager. I have transitioned and live and work as a woman, my job is dealing with the public every day so it is important that my voice matches who they see talking with them.
I have a friend, a trans woman, who is a voice coach. She teaches both male and female voices and can switch between them while training, which sounds really strange.
She has given me some tips regarding my own voice, but says that how I now speak is my natural voice.
It really has a lot to do with how badly you want to learn. It really does make a difference if you are wanting to pass as a woman when you're out. I have several personal friends who have transitioned but still speak in their male voices. They're both "out there" and don't care what people think or say, but anybody who encounters them will know they're trans as soon as they speak.
Where I work, I am viewed as a woman by the staff and in the public eye, so to me it is imperative that my voice is feminine. It is also important to study the differences between how men and women actually say their words and how inflections differ. Alison discusses some of that in her post, and there are numerous free feminine voice teaching videos on line.
Hugs,
Ms. Lauren M
Tried and failed miserably. As long as I didn't go out, it didn't matter much. Since I have plans for Gisela to come out soon I need to find my feminine voice as soon as possible.
Gisela
Being mainly alone when en femme and not having spent any great amount of time out in public, I haven't had to have any conversations as Fiona yet. But now I'm starting to get out, this is something I need to work on, if only to see if I can actually get anywhere with it. Although I've no shortage of opportunity, the first difficulty to overcome is to get used to talking to myself for practice, which just seems odd ... I've no idea what to say!
@trudi Just trying that, reading articles from the news website this morning. Pleasantly surprised that it doesn't feel all that strange really. Reading aloud also feels like I'm actually taking in more of what my eyes are scanning, an added bonus! Thanks for the suggestion 🙂
I’ve also had very little opportunity to use my femme voice, such as it is. I drive to my office once a week (just under an hour each way). I find that talk to myself most of the way.
I do sometimes try to record it on my phone to listen back to, but weirdly I then suddenly run out of things to talk about.
Good information, I'll give it another go but I'm really not hopeful. I tried opening the throat and it did indeed make a difference but when I spoke it sounded like I was from an English private school and rather a parody of royalty as everything was so clearly enunciated. I do speak quite well anyway but my 'plummy' feminine voice (an English term, not sure if it's known in the States) took it up a notch too far.
I have tried on oh so many occasions. I voice is not overly masculine to begin with but a little too deep for my liking. What seems to work for me in talking more in a hushed voice. Just above a whisper. It seems good enough for people to hear and an octave or two higher on the range. After going out a few times people don't seem to care about that as much as I thought they would. It's nice to see this thread to find out what others do and think. Thank-you
Alana
I do consider myself very lucky as all I have ever done is to lower the volume of my voice a bit. My voice has never been particularly masculine and lowering the volume has been enough for my voice to sound female enough. I now know why thanks to Alison as I naturally have always talked a fair bit through my nose. I still have to be careful as I have been almost caught out a few times laughing a bit deep when something funny has taken me by surprise.
My voice is not too low, I just try to speak softly
I just try to speak more softly and slowly. This hasn't worked badly for me so far. I also try to use female inflection and phrasings.
A lot of women speak quickly with pauses to think and breathe.
They seem to be able to talk at the same time and still understand the conversation.
Since I put this poll up yesterday, the replies have encouraged me to have another go at changing my voice. I have been on Youtube and tried to follow a few videos which encourage you to try to alter the position of your larynx and to change the flow of air. I have read several warnings about straining and damaging your voice and while I think they are probably right, I'm not going to do it full time so I'm not too worried if I don't get it quite right. I have found that raising the pitch isn't too hard especially by speaking slowly, clearly and softly but trying to remove the resonance of the male chest and vocal chords will be much more difficult I suspect; I can almost hear how big my chest and throat cavities are!
I can't change my vote from 'No, I don't think I could' but if I was able, I would want to change it to 'I am trying', so my own poll has changed my own mind, how weird is that?
@rebeccabaxter Hi Becca,
Although I had figured out in my teens how to speak in an acceptable female voice, it still needed work if I was going to transition at my workplace. I have a friend who is a trans woman and also a voice coach. She showed me how to train my throat muscles to raise my larynx and keep it there. Other things she helped me with was better resonance, exercises to do when to wake up your voice in the morning, and how women differ when enunciating their words and using feminine inflection. One thing that really helped me was to stop speaking from my chest but from my upper throat, she said to imagine your words are coming from just behind your front teeth.
Hope that is helpful 🙂
Hugs girl,
Ms. Lauren M
@rebeccabaxter Rebecca, that's why I say to talk through your nasal cavaties. They're smaller than the chest and mouth. It changes the resonance so that you don't hear the big chest and throat. Without even changing pitch, you can try this and see how your voice sounds smaller and more feminine.
Not weird at all.
I watched a really cool video last night, I’ll find the channel and post a bit later.
Went back to YouTube.
Channel I watched last night was Trans VoiceLessons - there’s a 25m voice feminization for beginners
Logging to find above was shown Olivia Flanigan she did a whole month long series in Jan.
I put "Other". I've covered this elsewhere, but the gist of it is that I use just the, say, top half of my regular register. This way it doesn't sound fake or silly because it's still my regular voice, but it avoids the lower, more masculine sounds.
The reason I don't make any more effort than that is because I feel like a) it's just a part of me, changing it significantly seems...disloyal to myself; and b) I'm 6'+, 200lbs+ in a bright red wig - no sighted person is going to be shocked when they hear my voice. 😉
Other, due to cancer, found in my neck, it disconnected the nerve to my Left vocal cord, so sometimes I sound like Berry White in the mornings to a high pitch woman by latenight. I just wish I could control it more.
@lisa55 Just think, you could do covers of You're The First, The Last, My Everything in the morning and as Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights in the evening 🙂 . Hope this isn't levity.
My female voice has become my natural voice. It's all I talk with now.
I haven't an overly masculine voice but it is still just that. I do soften the voice and, if I can describe it,not talk from the front of the mouth but from the back and open the throat allowing more air while talking , like a soft breeze taking the sound away.
My friends say my voice is fine and works well. I have conversations with plenty of other woman and even men now and no one bats an eyelid so it matters not if they know or not.
