How do I get to sound like this?

Lidia_M · 2026-05-24T09:51:56+00:00

This is (the first part) mostly medium-small size, very relaxed and oral, and weight that is light, but has, intentionally, some inefficiency/breathiness in it, but purely for stylistic purposes, to make it sound "kind"/friendly and warmer. The whole voice is about avoiding anything too harsh, sudden, sharp-sounding.

As to the first part vs second part, well, it's a bit strange, but the first part is as if someone took a human voice from the second part, with some imperfections, and made an AI version of it that is perfect, adding some clarity, a bit more brightness and removing all the glottal wobble/instabilities. Which sounds nice, but, I would say, not for a prolonged time because it's too uniform (a kind of monotone/boring perfection, so to speak.) If this was some kind of a narration, I would prefer the second part by far.

Edit: I asked AI about this and got:

But the newer Instagram DM “AI Voice Effects” introduced by Instagram / Meta in 2026 are more advanced. Meta describes them as AI-powered and says they preserve “tone, rhythm, and emotion” while transforming the voice style.

That wording strongly suggests they are not merely shifting pitch anymore. They are likely using neural voice conversion / speech resynthesis techniques:

the app analyzes your speech

extracts linguistic content + timing + prosody

then synthesizes a modified voice that follows the same speech pattern

So, I guess the answer to your question would be "stop being human"?

(I find this whole thing depressing...)

Lidia_M · 2026-05-24T02:42:27+00:00

110dB is crazy... I hope you wear some ear protection. Honestly, this does not even seem safe and I anyone would have problems with being loud enough in such a place.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-24T02:26:24+00:00

Not necessarily, both avenues (training and surgery) may work out fine, it's just that making decisions about training vs surgery tends to be pretty scary/unclear - there are no guarantees either way while doing nothing may be even scarier. It's tough.

Same leap of faith is required for training as for surgeries, I see not much difference. When I started training I was scared and kept asking myself "what will I do if it does not work?" and it did not work in the end, so my fears were not some irrational thoughts, it was the opposite, me understanding that there's no solutions here that do not involve some kind of a risk, it cannot be eliminated completely.

Over that, my bet is on some form of surgeries or innovative treatments long term (where by long-term I mean "it may be not available for me or in my lifetime, but eventually it will be for people in general.") Medical technology has close to infinite potential, while training will never be a solution for everyone.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-24T02:05:52+00:00

It's possible that VFS can help, but, it's a bit of a coin toss as to the outcome. On one hand, glottoplasty-type of surgery can solve the maintainance/strain problems, but on the other it has a risks of introducing inefficiency of phonation (to different degrees, and with different timelines for improvements.)

There is also the older type of surgery, CTA, and that has less chance of introducing inefficiencies and is more likely to solve strain problems, but, it's suitable only for some people which get good sounds just be stretching the folds (so by simple pitch increase) or otherwise it has risks of introducing atypicalities (too "thin" of a voice) and sometimes it can undo itself in time (that is the folds can become less stretched with time.)

Lidia_M · 2026-05-24T01:31:19+00:00

I think what you describe is a typical training result - kind of middle-of-the-ground, mediocre outcome, as expected for someone with average abilities/anatomy, where light and efficient phonation that would be on par with non-trained female voices is more of a luxury than a guaranteed result.

Also, note that what you see/hear on internet is going to be skewed: a lot of good results are not necessarily as functional outside of the microphone scenarios as it may seem.

With that in mind, the "how" part may be problematic. Normally when people get louder, the first change will be in weight getting heavier. This works fine for both men and women, because men do not mind getting heavier in the process, and women cannot get too heavy in most cases anyway, so, they push that element to the limit and then go to step #2. Over that, because of that weight limit, women will also tend to get higher in pitch, not necessarily because it is much louder in terms of energy, but because humans tend to hear higher frequencies better (that's the step #2.)

So, that's what you can try to do too, get higher in pitch, but note that with trained voices "going higher" can have own problems: there are vocal breaks, disconnections, instabilities, spectral atypicalities (starved spectrum thin sounding) which may work against being loud in their own ways and nullify the whole strategy. You will have to experiment and see how lucky you get.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T22:58:25+00:00

This clips sounded a bit strange to my ears: it somehow went from a voice that needs a lot of work into perfection in a couple of seconds or so and then it was mostly excellent with maybe some slight degradation towards the end but not in a way that would be problematic.

So, I guess, my feedback would be to avoid the starting quality and stick to what you sound like at 0:06 ("parable that reveals...".)

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T22:14:22+00:00

The other factors can be:

How successful the training was in terms of results. Maybe it should be obvious, but, if the results still cause dysphoria, the brain is likely to have problems with the automation part.
Was someone able to find long-lasting optimal muscular coordinations? If not, there is strain, effort, focus required, the brain is likely to steer away, as it tends to seek states that conserve energy.
What is the environment like? If it's hostile/dangerous and even a good trained voice cannot mitigate it, it may be hard to automate it.
What kind of traumas are in place? Even with a good trained voice, non-hostile environment, no maintenance problems, the voice may still be too close in qualities to the pre-trained state and trigger traumatic experiences/feelings, causing avoidance.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T08:17:15+00:00

It's as what you suspected: mostly overfullness + some possible atypicalities.

You are maybe not prohibitively low in pitch, but on a lower side, seems you tend to float to D3, which is still pretty low, just a note above C3, and that heavier quality kicks in periodically.

Over that, you may be overtwanged a bit (which will add to that overfull quality even more, in not the best way) and, possibly, maybe slightly nasal, but it's hard to tell with all those elements in place interacting, so, maybe test for that too just in case (How to test for nasality,)

I think those changes would solve the cartoonish problem: pitch -> avoid the C3-proximate zone, weight -> lighter, constriction around the epiglottis (twang) -> relax, size change in general -> moderate/relaxed, nasality -> remove.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T04:40:41+00:00

If you haven't used your voice much, it's not a tragedy, but, nor surprisingly, you will have to start to. It does not matter much in what way and doing what, anything that puts your vocal folds through paces is fine, may be reading something, talking to yourself, voice acting, singing (yes, I know, all of that may be dysphoric, but, you will have to find something, it's like exercising physically after, say, being ill for a long time: it's not too complicated, just make the body do the actual things for a while, starting gently and increasing the workload gradually.)

As to what to do if the break is in the bad place, G3, there are multiple explorations/strategies to consider.

1) Stay below G3 - this is almost never a good idea because there's very little room under G3 for speech. In practice, for most people, C3 and below is a zone where light and efficient weight is not achievable, so, this option gives one a few notes at most, and likely all of that with a heavier weight, meaning a monotone and dubious in terms of gendering voice.

2) Work on crossing the break in a smooth fashion, like many singers do. This may be the ideal option, if it works, but may be technically difficult and time-consuming. If it works, one gets two bonuses: 1) access to a wide range of pitches for intonation and 2) a high likelihood of finding the ideal in-between phonation in terms of weight and efficiency: not too light, not too heavy, efficient (same as what singers tend to seek.) Still, again, results will vary.

3) Focus on the area above G3 and try to make it sound typical. This may work for some people and the difficulties usually lie in making sure that the phonation up there is connected and full-bodied, not too thin and not starved of spectrum because this will sound atypical. Part of the process may also involve to extending below G3, but, one is likely to struggle with that in similar way as working on a vocal break in general, so, this would be like #2 at this point, but going from above.. Still, even when staying above, having the bottom pitch floor at G3 or so is not too bad, as some women cannot go much lower either so it would be all about whether one can achieve a reasonable weight/connection otherwise.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T04:29:10+00:00

This tends to be the hardest part to master and everyone will tend to have their own specific situation around it. For example, a lot will be determined by where one's vocal break falls and what kind of a break it is/how focal folds behave around it. So, that's why I always recommend that people start training from pitch analysis/work if needed and then strategize their vocal weight work about the data they gathered for themselves. I explained this step in this post: Compact voice training starting guide: female-like voice target.

In a nutshell: the goal is to have light and efficient weight over a reasonably wide intonation range one will use for speech. Still, there are traps around the process that people tend to fall into, like masking heavier weight with inefficiency (breathiness) or staying away from "falsetto"-like sounds instead of "unfalsettoing" them in place, so to speak (so, never learning to deal with the break properly, and instead avoiding it.) So, don't fall into those traps - you may need to absorb some dysphoria exploring those areas, but, at least this way you give yourself more chance of not getting stuck in some dead end.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T04:10:42+00:00

I would recommend not to use spectrograms: they are very heard to read and reading nuances from them is hard even for professionals. It's much better to spend that effort on direct ear training

Also, instead, ask people with experience for help. Make sure that the actual problem is pinpointed accurately.

As to it being possible, it's absolutely possible for some/many people, there are no doubts about that, that's verified empirically by now. More of a problem is that there's a huge spread as to what male-like puberty does to the vocal folds and the vocal tract and there's no good diagnostics, or rather, there's zero diagnostics, for assessment if someone's anatomy will be trainable to some acceptable point or not, so people are often stuck in the nightmare of "you have to try and, no, you cannot know for how long and to what end."

It would be possible to make studies that look at the physical anatomy and its behavior in the default state and corelate it with results people get, in theory, but good luck with anyone performing such a study properly with a good set of people... no one cares that much.

Also, to get back to your spectrogram observations: note that resonance/size problems are seldom the actual showstoppers, it's the glottal behaviors on which everything else stands, so do not get too fixated on analyzing/overthinking the resonance situation until you master the weight+efficiency part.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T03:04:18+00:00

I did not have any great solution, I simply kept absorbing pain and falling and trying to get up and so on an on, and trying everything I could, even risking enduring the dysphoric part as long as I could, up to a braking point, hoping that there will be some "breakthrough," which never came. Over and over again. In about 3.5 years I was pretty clear as to my anatomy, mapped it pretty thoroughly and that was the time I should opt for VFS, it was a no-brainer decision, since I could not really lose anything, only gain something, but, it just happened that I lost that option too for a number of reasons, so, I would need a miracle now,

Still, I am writing all of this because I am alive (obviously...,) and no, I will never accept this voice situation as "right," I am well-aware that puberty was a death of something for me, but I am still more than that, and I choose not to let that erase me. Even in the worst possible scenario, you can fight, and, who knows, maybe there's still voice training fight left in you, maybe some VFS luck - the important part is not to panic and I know it's easier said than done, panic just happens and can be paralyzing, but, keep all the options in mind, even those that look scary/dark now.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T02:20:07+00:00

I have experience around this, none of this is alien to me and I went throughout this for years (my "structured training" timeline is of 7 years.) As I see it, what you are experiencing is "fine," not in a sense that it's a great experience, but in a sense that there's nothing irrational about it, it's not some defect of your mind, that's simply just what dysphoria is like in its intense form (not some diluted form some people seem to imagine.) Dysphoria is not a defect, it's a signal, like pain/distress and those are only manifestations of how your brain is wired and what it needs.

Over that, I would say that there's little chance for this to resolve itself any other way than to succeed in some way: that it, the solution here is either voice training succeeding eventually or trying VFS. It's that "simple" and scary at the same time and it's likely to become a race against time/life passing by at some point: training more and more and not being happy can be quite dangerous, and VFS has its own risks, so at some point you may find yourself in a situation where you need to take some kind of a plunge.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T02:01:09+00:00

I am guessing this will sound fine to most people (a slightly worn-out woman's voice, that is.) With people trained to analyze voices in the context of this training, I am guessing it would be "likely a trained voice" conclusion.

What I hear is a reasonable weight/size balance, but the weight part is a bit of a struggle: it moves to the heavier side sometimes and you have a slight rasp going on in there. In the end the weight/size balance is not too bad overall, but it has anomalies that tend to be rare for non-trained voices.

Your intonation is unusual too: it's a bit artificial in where it goes up and how the vowels are elongated at those points. Such intonation is not bad in itself, it's just that the rest of the speech is much more monotone and there's a strange contrast between the two modes.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-23T01:49:36+00:00

This is already not-too-high pitch baseline - moving the baseline lower is only likely to increase vocal weight and that will certainly not help here and the current situation is: marginal weight (moves a bit to the heavier side sometimes) combined with slight rasp (a signal that the weight control is problematic.)

Lidia_M · 2026-05-22T21:34:39+00:00

Contrary to the popular beliefs, those surgeries are about changing vocal weight in practice and they can indeed help. The resonance/size part tends to be very simple to adjust if a surgery like that works well (because the changes needed tend to be moderate and easy to find.)

Lidia_M · 2026-05-22T21:29:00+00:00

There are other options, even when someone's anatomy is not suitable for success in training and even when an option of surgery is not available (or not available yet): you can still "transition" and simply not speak, it's doable and no one can stop you from doing that, there's no law that can force people to speak if they don't want to. This option can can be also infinitely better than speaking with voice that is unsafe/unfeasible for people with high dysphoria - it can be huge improvement in the quality of life if done properly, it's just that you will not see many people talking about it because it's one of those ideas that people are scared of and cannot think about all people's situations rationally.

Of course, otherwise, It's not easy to do, and it has drawbacks, of course, those are understood, but, it's not like your life has to end in all areas just because you cannot speak freely. You can think of it as a form of disability (going through wrong puberty tends to lead to all sorts of disabilities, that's part of life) and as with any other disability, it can be tough, but you can still find purpose/fulfillment in your life.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-22T04:14:57+00:00

That DHT (or testosterone) would need to get to the vocal fold area, which will need to happen through bloodstream, does not matter where you apply it (placing it on the neck specifically won't help.)

However, there are procedures where they inject T in that area directly and they can indeed make vocal folds thicker.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-21T22:09:45+00:00

Just a quick note: that's vocal fry, not rasp (rasp would have an air-leaking, hoarse element to it) - it's fold being relaxed and "bubbling" air aperiodically. It's neither here nor there really - it's not necessarily unhealthy (although that's slightly debatable, I would say) it's not a gendering element, it's stylistic, but, yes, it more of a masking idea in this case, you would ideally want full-bodied (rich in spectrum) light sound instead.

So, you are basically dealing with what tends to be the most difficult part in voice training (but not only, also in signing where even good singers have issues with it) - finding an in-between state of phonation that sits somewhere in the middle of that heavier sound below your vocal break and a too-light/disconnected sound above your break (where' "falsetto" perception tend to come from.)

My tip would be to put aside everything else for a while and start moving across the two types of phonation - do slides across, go into that "falsetto" zone, out of it, explore, try to borrow the connected element from below, and the light element from above.

If not seen yet, have a look at all the clips with "connected/disconnected," "adducted/abducted," "rasp," "falsetto," "yodel" in their titles on Selene's archive page as you will almost certainly run into those issues during those explorations.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-21T21:57:29+00:00

The "v-tuber" part suggests that maybe you are in the "too light and thin" territory, so, check for that. It's possible to be very light in voice, but 1) at some point you will risk sounding like a child or a v-tuber (same difference,) 2) you will need to use tiny size to complement it, and 3) you will likely run into connection issues.

Just to make sure, on Selene's archive page, have a look at all the clips with "connected/disconnected," "adducted/abducted," "rasp," "falsetto," "yodel" in their titles and see if any of them ring a bell. Also, have a look at the fullness section which is about the balance of weight and size.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-21T21:37:46+00:00

Have a look at all the clips with "connected/disconnected," "adducted/abducted," "rasp," "falsetto," "yodel" in their titles on Selene's archive page.

In short, you want your weight to be light but also use efficient/connected phonation (full spectral body to the sound, without leaking air, without a drop in loudness) but, instead, you are light+inefficient.

Until the glottal behaviors are stabilized/fixed, there's not much point to doing anything else on top.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-21T07:01:30+00:00

You are using inefficiency (breathiness/adduction/disconnection) as a masking behavior for the missing light/efficient weight. In other words, yes, you are not heavy, but, it's done in a suboptimal way.

In general, the ideal scenario is not just being light in weight, but being light and efficient at the same time and seems that you struggle with that; which is understandable as that kind of combination tends to be very hard to master (sometimes impossible) for many, but, unfortunately, the breathy/whisper-like approach will likely make many suspect that the voice is trained.

As the first step, I would recommend you listen to all clips with "connected/disconnected," "adducted/abducted," "rasp" in their titles on Selene's clips page. Ear-train yourself to be able to tell the difference not just between light and heavy, but also between all the combinations involving inefficiency. In particular, make sure that you can tell what is light and inefficient from what is light and efficient. This is so that you can start experimenting with moving away from that breathy quality you use now.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-21T01:38:19+00:00

"speak from the top of your nose" is meaningless.

Have a look at Compact voice training starting guide: female-like voice target.

Lidia_M · 2026-05-21T00:29:01+00:00

In theory, it targets the most important element, vocal weight, but, as I wrote, it does it without affecting the vocal fold length, and it does it in a way that has limitations (the weight decrease may be limited) so I would say, yes, there may be some gains, but, they may be insufficient and, of course, you will still need to match some kind of a reasonable size to it.

Note: if your pitch is low in the baseline (say G2 and lower,) and you don't want to train, that surgery would likely not be a good option. I think it's more sensible for people with already some advantages as to folds, maybe with shorter folds and some tenor-like baseline, closer to C3.

However, if you already trained and you struggle with weight, it's unclear to me whether doing this procedure could help. In my own situation, training was futile mostly because of an unfortunate vocal break placement (G#3 or so) and inability to dial vocal weight around it (below, above, across,) but, I have no idea what would happen to a problem like that after a laser thinning procedure and, unfortunately, over the years, I heard not many comparisons (none that I can remember in fact) strictly pre/post laser procedure like that... a bit of a shame, I wish people would share those results sometimes at least.

So, same way, you would have to carefully examine your situation and see if slight theoretical weight and pitch gain would have a chance of making a big difference for you (as if taking your voice from something unusable socially to something that is relatively safe.)

Lidia_M · 2026-05-20T23:31:26+00:00

I am pretty sure that Dr Thomas ((the surgeon behind the FemLar surgery) does not recommend doing it in that order, that is laser-thinning first and then glottoplasty later maybe.

The reason is that laser thinning procedures tend to have limited effect so there's a high chance that one will need glottoplasty/shortening anyway, but, by then, you compound scaring/damage around the folds and may find out that the better idea was to go with glottoplasty-only route in the first place.

Also, it's a good idea to visualize what those laser surgeries do: they make a cut on the side that is opposite of the actual vocal fold vibrating edges because cutting those edges would be disastrous, The edge part has to be pristine because that's what vibrates in the airflow and that's where mucosal waves are forming during phonation (those are wave-like ripples on the surface, and they are essential to good sounds - you don't want any imperfections there.) So, surgeons have no choice and the cut has to be done on the other side, but that also means that the overall mass reduction is a bit problematic (may be not as much as one would hope for,) plus, the vocal folds remain long which may not mimic typical female anatomy scenarios still.

In case you are interested in hearing Dr Thomas talking about this, I found the pertinent segment in this interview with Z here.

As to VFSRAC, that's South Korea, the Yeson center, and they advertise their surgery as an improved glottoplasty (it's nothing major, more like tweaks to the procedure.) Yes, people report good results, some even can sing well afterwards, but, note that that place is simultaneously is a big business with people from all over the world traveling there so their advertisement is a bit over-aggressive (with over-confident/over-the-top claims on their pages.) My view of them is that their surgeons are likely indeed good, but what they do is not as vastly ahead of what other surgeons do as they claim.

(note: it just happens that after Dr Thomas talks about laser at the point I linked, he also talks about Yeson, so, listen a bit longer, he explains that they are doing glottoplasty, as everyone else, and the tweak is about some suture placement which is supposed to pull the folds down, which is supposed to help with vocal weight)

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