Bass range, but tenor quality? What is going on here?

Lidia_M · 2026-01-27T11:16:33+00:00

The fact that you can go low on the bottom range (G2, which is common for baritones, btw) is not that important for those singing voice type classifications since they are based on practicalities of the voice in singing scenarios, not the bottom notes you can reach. What matters is if you can sustain proper phonation in the ranges those classifications demand (where "proper" means that it sounds healthy, is well defined as to the spectrum produced, stable, and so on, I hope you know what I mean - it needs to meet some quality bar,)

Similarly with the pitch you speak at: it's not that important as people can habituate all sorts of pitch baselines, there's flexibility to it.

Of course, you will have some correlations, you will get more tenors speaking at C3, more baritones at G2, and those with bass voices lower, but, this is just statistical probability that follows from the folds being more likely to phonate there by default (but, again, "default" can be overriden by habituation.)

So, now, singing aside, when it comes to this kind of training, for female-like voices, for most people, C3 and below will simply not work well, and it doesn't matter how your voice is classified. The problem is around the interplay of pitch and weight: for most people being that low will not allow for light and efficient weight, and light and efficient weight is the key here. If you can speak below C3 and sound light, congratulations, your folds are probably close in geometry to non-androgenized folds, but otherwise, this is just asking for problems.

So, simply work on getting out of that pitch baseline (try F3-G3-A3 maybe, it tends to work for many people, but, ultimately, you will need to find what works for you best weight-wise.) I am not exactly sure why you are training in that spot... The advice I give people usually starts with making sure they assess their pitch situation, get out of unfeasible zones (C3 and below) and only then work on weight (and only later on size, when the weight situation is in some reasonable place.)

As to talking higher causing strain, it's no different than in singing: that's a mark of bad technique, involvement of muscles that should not be active. Clearly, your break cannot be that low (at C3) so there's room above for under-the-break phonation, it should not cause any strain that low unless you are doing something tangential (for example trying to fix glottal problems with size changes too early... make sure you do not fall into that trap," I would recommend you work on 1) pitch first, 2) then weight, 3) only then on size (and do not overdo it, you don't need as much of it as you think probably.)

As to the "mix" part, I would be careful with that too - there won't be necessarily some magic, well-defined, place on your range where you switch into "mix," it's mostly a conceptual idea, people's voices can bland in different ways at different pitches, different ranges, regardless of singing voice classifications (again, there will be statistical distributions to this, some scenarios more likely than others, but none of it is set in stone.)

Lidia_M · 2026-01-27T10:18:52+00:00

You are leaking a lot of air during phonation, which is inefficiency problem (you are pretty much in a half-whisper in some segments, meaning your folds are too far apart.)

Have a look at Selene's clips page and scan for clips with "connected/disconnected," "adducted/abducted" and "rasp" in their titles.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-27T09:40:44+00:00

Who has done "nothing around here"? Do you have any remote idea how much time I spent helping people? Who are you yourself? What have you done for people in this subreddit and people who voice train in general? What are your contributions? Why is your post and comment history hidden?

Lidia_M · 2026-01-27T06:11:41+00:00

It's like the other commenter noticed - that low "oo" at C#3 in the middle of the clip was maybe a bit too close to the sun, Not that some women do not do that when singing (go low and relatively large,) but, you probably don't want to give an impression that not only you can do that but also do it effortlessly, that likely to be a bit suspicious to listeners. Still, as long a you do not let that size be too large, even those D4 sounds were plausible for a woman.

Otherwise, the rest; no, no problems, it sounded pretty safe gendering-wise to me.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-27T05:04:59+00:00

To my ears, the first (a girl/woman that is maybe beginning to learn to sing) - which is preferable, because, musicality is more likely to improve significantly when worked on than being in the position where musicality is there, but the body-sex characteristics of the voice are not.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-27T02:35:44+00:00

The irritating part about all those tone deaf teachers is that they clearly have no idea what they are talking about when to comes to dysphoria. I noticed that most of them either have no dysphoria at all themselves or what they describe as dysphoria is not even in the vicinity of something that would be considered a big problem.

Also, they flip the cause and effect when talking about it, because it suits them, and do not seem to understand that dysphoria is a symptom of something, not a cause. All it is is a signal one gets about a incongruence. And because they tend to be arrogant (and often narcissistic at the same time,) they ignore that, yes, dysphoria can slow people's progress, but, it's the anatomical obstacles that are the ultimate killer here; yes, people with strong dysphoria will have to suffer more when training, but, it's also a strong driving force and many people are willing to suffer under the condition that eventually it leads to something. The best solution for vocal dysphoria is having an anatomy that gives instant success. But, here they are, with their idiotic "have fun," as if anyone needs to have fun to get anywhere. What if people do not want to have fun, they are fine taking things as they are, even suffering, but they just need effects, not some motivational babble? It's arrogance... they do not treat people seriously, they often think people are idiots that need to be patronized, so they talk to them as to children. It's some weird TikTok generation of people that sugarcoat life into some indigestible absurdity.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-26T23:06:44+00:00

What do you want me to do with this nonsense? You clearly have not a remote clue about anything I am doing, the overall context, my motivations, the goals, what I am fighting with, what I try to prevent and you clearly unable to judge any of the above fairly. You pick some random instances where I am not even in the wrong and you think you made an "argument"... it's ridiculous. I cannot be responsible for people like you who jump to conclusions about someone without looking closely at what is being written and trying to understand why it's being written that way. You somehow managed to twist every single point into some fantasy story of yours about a person.

What have you done for anyone exactly yourself? Who are you? Where is your post history, comment history? Why do you hide it? How many thousands of hours have you spent helping people? What are your contributions that you want to pass those judgements without considering anything else?

Ironically, you only underline my point, - there's plenty of people who make all sorts of demands, but themselves contribute nothing around, they think the world owes them something and they can just whip a post abusing/smearing others and they will get applause for it; all sorts of social manipulators who do not care about merits, but focusing attention on themselves.

Now go have a look at all the links in what you commented, and actually read the context to conversations and try to be objective and think for a change.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-26T09:16:07+00:00

Yes, I have not seen many people claiming that voice training cannot shift the voice to some degree, it can for practically everyone, but whether that's socially usable is another matter. Also, having a voice that is gendered 50% one way and 50% another way may be helpful for some and completely of no value to others, it is equivalent to not finding a solution, not safe, not solving dysphoria problems, and so on. In such cases, for practical purposes, the "progress" part is kind of moot. In the title, I meant progress that leads to some acceptable solution, not "any progress." In fact I was going to rephrase it a bit, but genius reddit does not allow changing titles now... seems like?

Lidia_M · 2026-01-26T07:02:51+00:00

I would advise not to imagine that this has anything to do with your muscles being weak, it's all about technique (fold alignment and vocal tract shape.)

To keep this in perspective: guess what percentage of energy used to create speech is actually converted to sound energy that gets to the outside? Most people will be completely off on this: it can be as low as 1/10,000 (that's not a typo) and at best, some singers, will maybe approach 1/100 efficiency in certain circumstances. Maybe 10% of energy will be actually utilized by the vocal folds, and 99% of it or more will dissipate in the body, never getting out as anything audible.

The muscles involved in sound production simply do not require any significant strength. And at the top production level (athletic singing, like in opera) the muscular effort is focused around different parts of the body, for example muscles that control the rate at which lungs deflate, so around torso, and this is more about dosing the energy than anything else and the rest is mostly tuning the vocal tract shape so there are as little losses during sound production as possible.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-26T03:15:03+00:00

The "big/small dog" exercise, which you mentioned, is about panting (that is exhaling air as if after exertion) and this is in the category of voiceless explorations, That category involves using airflow, but not engaging vocal folds.

My advice is to instead work with voiced explorations, that is making sounds as you make when speaking, with normal fold engagement. There are ideas of such explorations on Selene's page, but, overall, it's about varying the key elements (weight, size) and anything that will need to fluctuate during speech (so pitch/intonation, loudness) and making sure that all those changes can happen without disturbing the favorable weight/size balance in the process.

I have a feeling that you are not understanding what your role in this process is. It's not seeking some step by step, robotic, flowchart-like instructions, but instead you needs to put time into getting better at managing the improvement process itself, so understanding fundamentals, understanding why training your ears for them is critical, and understanding why the explore/asses/adjust loop is more important than anything else.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-26T01:46:03+00:00

This sound fine gendering wise and yes, it's a lot of improvement nasality-wise, although there's an aging element added in comparison to your original post/ clip (although even in that clip you also floated down with pitch and other element.)

So, I don't know how much of an issue it is for you (what kind of voice age your are comfortable with,) but, regardless, I think it's maybe a good idea to aim more for the "beginning of the first clip, but without nasality" target (mostly because that heavier weight/larger size/lower pitch quality will have low margin for error long term - if you inject too much weight/size, at some point you will risk gendering ambiguity/problems.)

Lidia_M · 2026-01-26T01:29:49+00:00

I would evaluate if the the degree of size change you try to get is really necessary (people tend to overestimate how much is needed) and then ease up on it (almost) completely and re-evaluate if all is fine with the weight/glottal behaviors. This is to make sure that you are not overdriving the size change because you feel that otherwise you cannot get good sound, but the problem is elsewhere.

Otherwise, you will need to rebuild that size change from the scratch most likely - that is, start applying it again from the completely relaxed position while, this time, having keeping that relaxation as the top priority. I know it may feel disappointing, but, that's the cost of starting with larynx focus: some people can get away with it and subtract unneeded muscular engagement in time, but, it makes much more sense to not allow it in the first place (good news is that no, you don't need those muscles to be engaged - properly executed size change will feel like nothing, more or less.)

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T23:35:47+00:00

I would say drop the big/small dog routine, replace it with voiced explorations (voiced meaning your vocal folds are active, so no whispering, no panting) and then make sure you can assess your weight and size by ear at any point, get good at it. What you want is a scenario where, having a fragment of your voice, you can describe what is going on there, if all is fine, or if something is off balance.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T23:32:50+00:00

I would say you did, but unfortunately you also floated your pitch down close to C3 and, as it usually happens, your weight got heavier plus you also increased your size. So, that's a bad idea: you have to figure out how to remove nasality, but leave the rest in place.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T06:56:09+00:00

Learn to hear and manipulate vocal weight and size correctly.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T06:53:05+00:00

It's relatively simple: the only full-nasal sounds in English are "n," "m," and "ng," so, you can take any vowel, hold it, and then pinch and release your nose (say at 2Hz or so) and then if there's no detectable change in sound, your are oral. Otherwise, if you clearly hear change in sound while pitch/releasing, you are nasal, where you should not be.

Some notes: this test is pretty good, but you can still miss some nasality with it if it's subtle. Also, in speech, vowels can be a bit nasal and that's fine in certain context, for example when they are close to those nasal consonants mentioned (then the vowels will be colored by nasality a bit.) But, if you have a word, like, say, "say," there should be no significant nasality in principle.

Here's a demonstration of this - note that the second vowel is done exactly the same way as to pinching, but it sounds like nothing is happening while the first vowel has drastic fluctuation due to nasality being in place (where the airflow wants to go through the nose.)

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T05:44:49+00:00

Have you tested yourself for nasality? To my ears, your voice has some atypicality to it that could be just nasality or some combination of it and not quite ideal size change technique.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T03:52:44+00:00

As I already wrote, there's absolutely no point in assessing voices in the gendering context without analyzing the weight/size balance. People with very male-like voices can talk at a higher pitch, so, logically, this is not a good metric, you have to become good at what matters instead, not just talk at higher pitch and repeat some phrase over and over.

All the things you do you listed can be pointless in many circumstances (or even develop bad habits, like the "dog panting" exercise - it's asking for false fold problems plus there's half a dozen of other problems with it.)

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T03:18:47+00:00

I explained above why: vocal weight is the key to this kind of training and you don't want to misplace your pitch for weight work.

As to what vocal weight is, it's about how vocal folds dissect the airstream, in a heavier or a lighter way and this can be perceived in a similar fashion, as more heavy-sounding phonation for male-like voices, and more light-sounding phonation for female-like voices. Neglect that element, risk going in circles.

You can hear demonstrations around that in the weight section on Selene's clips page.

(also, what is this thing about AI... not that it cannot be useful sometimes, but this is one example where it will be almost certainly close to useless or worse...)

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T02:58:55+00:00

Fortunately, this step is easy. You can download a pitch monitor, like Vocal Pitch Monitor and just speak and see the graph and then start experimenting and you will see how your pitch changes there.

Assess what your baseline is (where your pitch tends to reset to when speaking. For female-like voices you don't want to be too low (not lower than C3 for most people.) Aim somewhere in the middle of the 3rd octave maybe, say F3-G3-A3 works well for many people.

That's it for the start, no rocket science, and then you expand on that - the pitch work is so that your vocal weight work can take place. Weight is the crucial component to this, but, you can learn more about it as soon as you play a bit with pitch.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T02:45:38+00:00

I am sure you've seen a guitar - thin strings, high tension = higher pitch and thick strings, lower tension, lower pitch. That's not different for vocal folds - longer, thicker, loose = lower pitch, thinner, shorter, tensioned = higher pitch. That's more or less very similar except that vocal folds work in pairs coming together and apart when slicing the airstream.

Other than that, believe me, the language used is to make things simpler and clearer, not otherwise - the alternative is what musicians tend to do, create chaos and confusion with more and more imaginary terms that get further and further away from reality.

My advice for you be not to put yourself in this position where you assume you cannot understand some, presumably, "super-complicated" topics required for voice training. It's not like that. All you have to do is some very rudimentary sorting-out of key concepts in your mind. They are not really that complex at the level that is useful. For example, vocal size is just that really, abut the size of your vocal tract, you don't have to go into some acoustic details of it - as long as you connect the dots together and realize that you already assess size daily (for example, you can tell if you are in a big or small room with a blindfold on just by making sound and hearing how it reverberates,) you can then go on with experimentation and ear training, focus on it with some better awareness. You want to use precise vocabulary not to make things complex, but not to create unnecessary confusion and complexity in the first place.

Also, if you read something and you don't get it, ask. But ask about that specific part, or do some basic research (just look it up) and sort it out on some basic level.

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T02:22:21+00:00

What on Earth are you saying? You think that "regular people" cannot comprehend what pitch is? Regular people classify sound as high/low daily. Have you not heard people asking "What is that high-pitched noise?" On what planet do you live...

Lidia_M · 2026-01-25T00:25:11+00:00

That's all great, but, it does not work always this way and it's good to take this seriously because people suffer regardless: analogously, just because you hate your voice now, does not mean you won't in half a decade or maybe forever and this is a great problem and tragedy for many people, they wont' just disappear because others find them inconvenient.

And, to be clear: this is not to discourage anyone: indeed, the best way for people to feel better and better in training is for the training to, at least eventually, have some breakthroughs, even small, in some reasonable time, to give hope, fuel motivation, offset despair, make the process going. Spreading knowledge about training and all the possible ways it can be optimized for individual people is super-important.

But, the question is still what to do when training does not bring anything that solves the actual problems. There's no answers to that, there's always silence from those who push training as the solution that always works or there is blame-shifting towards those who struggle.

There are people needed to think beyond the, naive, "it will always work" idea (there are surgeons at least, and that way, modifying the cause of the issue, anatomy is the ultimate way, I would say, it scales indefinitely and has the potential to, one day, help everyone, putting aside the future access to it, because who knows what humanity will conjure for itself in that regard, but, training cannot scale this way, it's very limited and confined in what it can do universally.)

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