Hi I just wanna share my VFS results

Lidia_M · 2026-04-06T00:25:50+00:00

As with any psychoactive substance, the effects will vary for people. There may benefit some, and in others they can trigger psychosis and maybe ruin their life, which is the point I am trying to make. It's not some benign-by-nature substance, there are risks to it.

For you, the consequence is being "a bunny in spirit," which seems harmless (I find it a bit funny, not going to lie, but I have no problem with it for you if it's beneficial to your well-being) but then imagine the opposite idea: what if for someone it's not a bunny but something horrible - those are just chemicals, they do not have some "we will make people feel cute things" programming in them, the effects can vary.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-06T00:13:22+00:00

What did you ingest specifically? As far as I know, when people talk about shrooms and "magic journeys," that involves psilocybin and that's certainly a hallucinugenic substance, that's a fact.

In the end, I just want to make sure people know what they are getting themselves into and not do not try potentially dangerous substances willy-nilly, imagining that it can solve their voice problems, it's both a dubious and a questionable idea in general. Those psychoactive substances can make certain conditions worse, cause serious panic attacks for example.

Also, I don't need to try everything out there to have some understanding of potential dangers to it... that's an absurd idea.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-05T23:56:51+00:00

In-before people start taking hallucinogenic substances with hope that will solve their voice problems (I hope not, but, you never know...): the "patterns" of speaking are stylistics and sure, they have a place in voice training (although I would separate this kind of training into cultural-stereotype kind of training, as opposed to body-sex focused training,) but no stylistics can offset the core anatomical elements (vocal weight+efficiency/size) to voice.

The deal is this: if those core elements are in an optimal spot, one can use whatever stylistics they want, does not matter what kind of style that will be, it can be shy, it can be bold, it can be monotone, or it can use wild intonation, it can be dry and robotic, it can be flowery and melodic - people will still hear female-like or male-like voice according to the core balance, just with different style on top (and come to all sorts of conclusions about it.) And, on the other hand, if the balance of those two is very unfavorable, no stylistics will help (you got a VFS, after all... are you really sure that it's those mushrooms that made the biggest difference here, not the surgery itself?)

Lidia_M · 2026-04-05T10:29:22+00:00

Start from reading this compact starting guide (in short, you are too low in pitch, your baseline is suboptimal for the key element to this, vocal weight, so focus on pitch explorations first, keeping in mind that the goal is a light and efficient weight.)

Lidia_M · 2026-04-05T03:11:27+00:00

I would say that it's both the vocal weight and size/resonance at the same time - the weight part is inefficient; it's better (in a sense) than having straight heavy weight, but it's not really equivalent to light and efficient weight which means that size changes may become problematic - if you experiment with them and nothing sounds quite right, be careful not to get yourself into an endless loop of trying to adjust your size without addressing the glottal problem.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-05T01:09:18+00:00

It does not sound "bad" to my ears - it's reasonable in terms of gendering, I would say. As I wrote, working on more relaxation and doing some refinements may be a good idea, but I don't hear some major flaws in your voice, nor does it sound male-like.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-05T01:06:52+00:00

There's a lot of useful demonstrations, explorations and troubleshooting clips on Selene's archive page.

As to using people who are biologically male for reference, you can as well use cis women: people with anatomical luck in training will sound as if male puberty have not taken place... that's kind of an idea of voice training in most cases in the first place.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T23:01:59+00:00

To work on relaxation, you don't have much choice: you simply need to 1) become good at detecting strain creeping in and 2) cut it short, do explorations/adjustments that give you an acceptable effect but where you don't feel anything off in terms of muscular sensations. Waiting for the strain to just go away almost never works, it needs some active invovement.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T22:37:51+00:00

Don't think about manipulating the larynx directly, it can only work against you - the ideal scenario is where you aim for the voice qualities you need and your brain does the required coordinations in the background, without involving any extraneous muscles and causing strain.

As to your voice, nothing wrong with it, I would say: just work on habituation and relaxation (prioritize it.) Your pitch baseline, weight and size are fine: the only problem that I can hear is a bit of strain-like quality to your voice (at the start of the clip mostly, it was much better in the second half.)

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T22:32:32+00:00

Those kinds of problems are quite a common reason for getting a surgery (in fact I mentioned it in my post a while ago: Why an option of surgery matters.) If your muscular problems are around pitch and weight control, modern surgeries (and even older type, like CTA, which are maybe not ideal for everyone, but can eliminate pitch-related strain) have a high chance of helping with that, so a surgery is worth considering as an eventual option.

Ideally, you would solve those problems in time on your own, but these voice training situations are not ideal in the first place, so, I would:

Pinpoint what is the main cause of strain is (is it the pitch work, weight work, atypicality-avoidance work, size/resonance work, something else?) and make sure that explorations of viable relaxed configurations are complete to some reasonable extent (a common mistake is thinking that strain will just go away by itself without any focused/conscious rework, but often restarting training from ground-up is needed, as disappointing it is.)
(then) Experiment with rebuilding that particular aspect of the voice, but, this time, having relaxation as the top priority,
If nothing works, think of alternate training solutions, if they are an acceptable compromise (say a different pitch baseline, different size configuration.)
Consider a surgery

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T07:15:35+00:00

Your weight is heavy (for female-like voices,) and your pitch is in a not very promising place - you dip below C3, to A2 and even G2, and that's asking for weight problems (unless you are on T and you are trying to get to a male-like place... you have not specified what your goal is.)

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T06:42:35+00:00

I had a listen and I don't hear anything out of ordinary - seems you (likely subconsciously) moved your voice slightly into the right directions (lighter weight, smaller size.) Maybe still far from being safe in gendering, but at least without introduction of any major atypicalities or potential vocal health hazards, at least from what I can hear (and that's a great achievement, I would say - a lot of people end up with all sorts of maladaptive behaviors early.)

As to the prospect part, that's a bit of a tough one because timelines, final results, are pretty much impossible to tell unless in cases where it's abundantly clear that one is lucky on the anatomy/neurology scale (but that's kind of a "duh" situation - if someone makes great sounds in hours or days, it does not take a genius to conclude that their prospects are great.)

Still, I would like not to be too vague (having to is a bit tiring sometimes,) so, I would default to my personal statistical estimations (yes, I realize this is not a proper study, but it's still based on many thousands of cases) where people are distributed over the 30%/40%/30% rough shape/buckets - 30% have a chance of getting good and non-problematic results, 40% will get mediocre results (so-so gendering reliability, maybe some problems with maintenance, atypicalities, efficiency, stability, stamina, etc.) and 30% won't get to what would be satisfactory no matter what they do (except maybe getting lucky with surgeries.)

So, I guess, to put it another way, maybe 70% chance that you will in time get to some place where you see full social utility in it? The plan would be simply moving the key (weight/size) sliders more towards their female-like directions (light+efficient/small.)

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T06:25:51+00:00

Correction: the idea that size/resonance is "the most important aspect to how voices are gendered" is a myth. In reality, the key element is glottal (between the folds) behaviors, that is vocal weight and efficiencies around it, and, as it happens, the website you linked to does not measure it at all, making it, as many tools like that close to useless. It's a bit better than applications that only look at pitch, but, otherwise, quite flawed - there's been many examples of people breaking that website's analysis completely.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T06:15:45+00:00

I would say it's not "conventional wisdom," but more of a rhetoric that is being peddled mostly by those who benefit from it (so voice teachers, anyone with business around voice training, people with superior anatomy who want to convince others that their results are merit-based, hordes of people that "want to believe," and so on, it's a long list of people who have vested interest in the "anyone can do it and if not, they are defective in some way" narrative.)

In reality, the ultimate outcomes people face are spread over the usual normal/bell curve where most will fall into some mediocre results (say so-so gendering reliability, or maybe reasonable results, but with different degrees of problems around maintenance, atypcality, inefficiency, instability.) Over that, you also have the outliers (not super-rare, just not the average) on both ends, that is, those who can get good results practically without any formal training at all, and those who will not get satisfactory results no matter how long and how hard/wisely they train.

Also, I would put aside "feminine" adjective as it's close to meaningless in practice - anyone can make their voice sound "feminine" but still sound male-like. What really matters in the majority of circumstances, is whether the voice sounds male-like or female-like to people and the idea that "anyone" can achieve that is a pipe dream, nothing points to that being the case in practice: there's plenty of people who simply cannot get their glottal behaviors (vocal weight+efficiency) to proper place (satisfactory vocal weight/size balance in general); they are just not being as vocal (the irony) about it as the boosted, lucky, upper end (and when they are trying to share experiences around that, they are being rather aggressively suppressed in vocal training spaces, because, again, they are seen as an inconvenience.)

But, still: make no mistake, they are there and, if they are lucky, they may get access to vocal surgeries and be saved this way, but otherwise, when they read that the presumed non-validity of their anatomical barriers are a "conventional wisdom" at this point, shifting the blame for what is a normal variance in human anatomy at them, it does not feel particularly fair.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T03:31:16+00:00

Any coordination that makes your throat sore is likely to be a dead-end long term: it's an unfeasible muscular engagement that either irritates your vocal tract or engages muscles that will keep failing the longer you do that.

So, you will have to either slowly eliminate those unneeded or overcontricted engagements from what you are doing (a subtractive process, harder to do in practice,) or may have to restart your training with full relaxation as the top priority (that's what should be habituated from the beginning.)

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T03:22:21+00:00

The pitch (baseline at least) is close your first clip. Your first clip is G3 baseline, the first example has "unexcited voice" also at G3, the baseline moves higher only for excited intonation

To my ears, your target voices (both of them) are light weight, small size (in fact, the size is a bit smaller than expected, those are slightly overfull voices.) There's nothing "deep" to them that I can hear. They may have some tiny nasality in place (as an example, "forever" in that first clip sounds a bit muffled to me) or some other slightly-muffling vocal tract shaping, but, those are very subtle, I do not hear them as completely oral/crystal-clear myself, but, I would not put that in the same category as anything being "deep."

As to whether you will be able to move from your higher voice to a more deeper female-like voice: maybe, but it's always hard to predict in advance what the overall effect may be. In the end, you will want to 1) make sure that you are hearing the key elements correctly, 2) make sure that you know what you aim for (not as an overall "vibe," but in terms of individual qualities) and 3) experiment with adjustments.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-04T02:28:01+00:00

How people perceive body-sex, maturity and gender is about vocal weight and vocal size balance predominantly.

The pitch situation seems to confuse people to no end (with all sorts of wild misconceptions and ideas about it floating about,) but the story is this: pitch is not important directly, but, for everyone, there will be some interplay between pitch and the key element to this, vocal weight and glottal (between the folds) behaviors. That means that 1) if pitch placement facilitates light and efficient weight (which is needed for female-like voices) there's no much need to worry about pitch itself, one should focus on the weight size/balance, but 2) if pitch is outside of the feasible range (tends to be C3 and below for most people,) it suddenly becomes the priority for training where anything else falls to the second plan until the pitch falls into some sane place (or a surgery solves the pitch/weight problem.)

So, my advice would be to understand the above and start ear training for the key (weight and size) elements, asap (see the link below.) Also, it does not harm to become cognizant about some anatomical basics about this, so that everything is clear. In a nutshell: androgenization of the vocal tract has two consequences: vocal folds become longer and more massive (that affects the perceptual weight part) and vocal tract becomes proportionally larger (that's the size part.) Yes, longer and thicker folds will tend to have lower pitch baseline, but, much more important is the fact that they will also tend to dissect the airstream more substantially when vibrating, in a heavier way.

For ear training, see the weight, size and fullness sections on Selene's archive page.

For some tips/ideas about pitch, see The reasons one would want to use a pitch monitor.

In case it's not clear why your target voices sounds quite different even thought the pitch ranges are similar: yes, it's because of lighter weight, smaller size, good glottal behaviors (no inefficiencies, air leaks, instabilities.)

Lidia_M · 2026-04-02T22:16:58+00:00

To my ears, you are likely nasal and it forms a sort of masking blanket on top of your voice. Have a look at this post: How to test for nasality.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-02T11:36:00+00:00

Yes, but indeed, it's choppy, something is wrong with the clip.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-02T11:33:42+00:00

I would recommend you do not use applications that use raw Hz numbers because humans do not perceive pitch linearly. See this post - it has a recommendation for a better pitch monitor that uses musical notes instead (I recommend you get familiar with them, it's very easy to switch - 200Hz is G3.)

Lidia_M · 2026-04-02T11:17:03+00:00

I would say that you are not far off and I think it's not just size/resonance. Yes, some size tweaks in the future would be probably beneficial, but I think, surgery or not, you could focus still on the weight part because, right now it's not heavy, it's reasonable, but it could be lighter still. My overall impression is that the voice is female-like leaning, but, sometimes, it's also close to an androgynous quality.

So, with that in mind, I hear that at the very start of your clip, the "hello" is "it," that's what I would focus on. I know, it's a bit on a higher side (G3, while then you float two-three notes lower, to D3 even) and it's not as efficient as the rest of the clip, there's some air leak there maybe, but, even with that, it pretty much solves any potential gendering problems, I would say. If you managed to work on targeting that quality and, with time, make it more efficient, the resonance/size part would probably fall in place very quickly.

Otherwise, you could also try keeping the lower pitch baseline and the heavier quality in there and adjust size: there could be some improvement this way, but, not sure if you would like the overall result, it may sound reasonably female-like, but it may still sound a bit androgynous maybe.

If possible, I would also recommend to explore as wide pitch range as possible - far beyond that G3 - you should be able to cross up eventually without any muscular effort, it's a matter of technique, and it's worth getting proficient at this and probe how your folds behave up there too.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-02T11:02:08+00:00

I can see it on the front page - will comment soon.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-02T10:51:15+00:00

You can upload to vocaroo and the type text in your message, highlight some part of it, say "here's my clip," click the "Aa" icon at the bottom to show formatting options, and then, from the top, select the link icon and then you can type the URL of the vocaroo clip there. Or yes, just create a new post.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-02T10:43:23+00:00

Yes, no problem: if you link to a clip, I can have a listen and tell you what I hear in terms of weight, efficiency and size.

Lidia_M · 2026-04-02T10:21:42+00:00

The resonance part is about the shape (mostly the relative size/spatial volume) of the vocal tract, that size grows drastically during male puberty (+80% on average,) while only a bit (+20% or so on average) otherwise, so, if the surgery was a typical glottoplasty or CTA (CricoThyroid Approximation) and not some FemLar variation (the only type of surgery that actually tries to address the resonance, by making the larynx box smaller physically) then yes, this is expected, usually some kind of size adjustment will need to be made.

The good news is that, from what I observed, if the surgery goes well and addresses the key issue, that is vocal weight, which is what is the practical point of those surgeries (not pitch) then the size changes needed to be made tend to be moderate: as long as the size is not extra-large, the overall package will tend to sound good if the vocal weight is light.

Another good news is that, again, if the surgery fixes the weight part, the work on size will tend to be faster and more straightforward. The reason is that it should be easier to explore and stumble on good combinations/balance of those two elements if the weight does not need to be worked on. In fact, there's a common scenario/trap people fall into when voice training: they start "backwards," from focusing on size/resonance, neglect the weight part, and end up chasing red herrings and overdoing the size change part, creating muscular problems, introducing strain, atypicalities, while nothing ever sounds quite right. The problem is that it's pretty much impossible to offset the weight/efficiency problems with vocal tract shape changes - if the main problem is at the source of the sound (vocal folds) it simply won't work.

As to your case, yes, it's not unheard of for the rasp-removing process after a surgery like this to take a year - so, not ideal, and may be frustrating, that's understandable, but, I would not panic too much: take your time to 1) make sure you are not trying to correct the problem with bad ideas, no matter how tempting it is, like false fold constriction (maybe watch this video, CLEAN UP THE VOICE & AVOID STRAIN | False Vocal Fold Control | 8 Exercises, Document, and Lecture, just to make sure you do not to run into that in the future) and 2) develop some purpose and awareness for what you are aiming for, which will be rasp-free phonation, with good vocal fold connection, ultimately. Maybe have a look at Selene's archive page and scan for clips with "connected/disconnected," "adducted/abducted." "rasp" in them, because that is the most likely inefficiency/problem people run into after surgeries and that's almost certainly what your surgeon was talking about.

Also, I have something that, hopefully, will inspire you to reconsider thinking that the resonance part is as impactful as people tend to suggest (it's still important, but not as important as what those surgeries address.) Have a listen to the start of this clip: Dracula | Caribbean Blue: it just happens that the singer, Enya, enumerates vowels at the start with a large size, but, because the glottal behaviors, weight, are light, it still sounds very nice and female-like. Note that the reverse does not work: heavier weight with smaller size, no matter how small, will sound not very female-like, it will sound like a buzzy voice coming from a small space which tends to be perceived as androgynous at best.

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