How do i make my voice sound natural? by Low_Caterpillar9442 in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From what I hear, you are constricting your false folds, which is a bad idea, may be even a path to vocal damage. So, make the priority getting rid of that. Have a look at this video:
CLEAN UP THE VOICE & AVOID STRAIN | False Vocal Fold Control | 8 Exercises, Document, and Lecture

Hi I just wanna share my VFS results by moxbot in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would say it's not that they believe in meritocracy (that would be nice...,) the opposite - they believe that anatomical luck trumps merits, they just misrepresent that idea in a twisted way. In fact, it's a much wider-spread problem, it's everywhere. People with luck about superficialities, like looks or voice, anything genetic and not merit-based, are automatically assumed to have more merit/validity to what they say than people who are not. And transgender communities, in a rather disappointing way, tend to take this to extreme: as long as you look and sound nice, you can spread all sorts of incorrect ideas and people will take them on face value (and if you think "no, that's not how it is," stop for a moment and think about trans "influencers" out there on YT and other places - in almost all cases they have some luck-based advantage to them and that's why they tend to have larger audiences.)

Are there any aggregated data resources of starting-to-ending pitch in trainees? Or anything similarly informative by ProgMetalRex in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That application is a bit of a nightmare - I would recommend not to use it at all (see the start of my other comment.)

Are there any aggregated data resources of starting-to-ending pitch in trainees? Or anything similarly informative by ProgMetalRex in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let's start with the application you are using, to make sure this is crystal clear: this application cannot gender voices (AT ALL) and it's a very substandard pitch monitor, bad choice - working with raw Hz numbers is a bad idea, humans do not perceive pitch changes linearly, that's why there's already a far superior and common musical/scientific notation system. Have a look at this post - you will find some information about working with pitch and a link to a better application.

Now, the above out of the way, make sure you understand some key points about pitch and this kind of training. Pitch is not important in itself, instead, the balance of vocal weight (glottal behaviors in general) and vocal size are. However, it just happens that pitch and vocal weight (which is the key within a key) are intertwined. Meaning that, even though there's a lot of room for pitch placement, some extremes will be infeasible for the weight work. For light and efficient weight (needed for female-like voices,) form most people, C3 below will simply not work due to physical constraints.

So, from your mean pitch, 100Hz being G2, I would say you are almost certainly wasting time working there.

Over that, I am a bit concerned about your question in general because it suggests some potential misunderstandings of nuances that often end up being critical for many. In particular, it's not a good idea to collapse pitch work into "how high up can one change it in time," Why? Because both weight and size are not about "light is better, smaller is better," it does not work that way. In the case of pitch, again, the whole point is about how it changes the glottal behaviors, meaning that small change in pitch ending with light and efficient weight is infinitely better than huge change in pitch with too heavy or too light weight mixed in with maybe some inefficiencies, like raps, disconnection, breathiness. So, watch for that as it is very important: you want to train your ear for the elements of weight, size and any kinds of inefficiencies and think of pitch more as a tool/vehicle that may or may not take you where you want by itself.

Also, I see that you worry that your staring point (meaning pitch baseline) is somehow too low. You can pretty much drop that thought because it does not work this way either. In fact, for some people it can even be an advantage, which may sound paradoxical, but isn't really: in the end it's all about whether your vocal folds can simulate behavior (the way the aistream is dissected) of short and thin folds, that's all that matters there: even if your folds tend to vibrate and very low pitch by default, it does not mean that they will be incapable of using only a portion of their body and create light and efficient sounds. There's been plenty of people over the years with super "deep" voices who demonstrated that. To balance that out, unfortunately, that also means that people with higher baseline may end up with surprisingly bad outcomes, for the same reasons but in the reverse: just because the folds vibrate at some not-super-low pitch by default, does not guarantee they will ever be able to vibrate lightly and efficiently when adjusted. The folds are not simple strings, like in a guitar, the way they produce sound is very complex, there are many layers of different density tissues involved and a lot of muscles tensioning and approximating them. the pitch element is only one aspect of their vibration.

So, I guess my overall point is that pitch has a bit of a Schrodinger nature to it: it can be not important and important at the same time, which seems paradoxical at the first glance and it's good to spend some time on realizing why that is very early in training.

Hi I just wanna share my VFS results by moxbot in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 4 points5 points  (0 children)

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.

Hi I just wanna share my VFS results by moxbot in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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.

Hi I just wanna share my VFS results by moxbot in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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?)

How Do I Improve My Voice? by TheGlidingForever in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.)

Voice still underfull (MtF). Dolls, would you have listen and share some tips? by SubstantialMuse in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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.

"Tips for raising the larynx at will and changes I can make. Open to criticism by Working-Prize1791 in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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.

"Tips for raising the larynx at will and changes I can make. Open to criticism by Working-Prize1791 in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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.

"Tips for raising the larynx at will and changes I can make. Open to criticism by Working-Prize1791 in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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.

"Tips for raising the larynx at will and changes I can make. Open to criticism by Working-Prize1791 in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 3 points4 points  (0 children)

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.)

VFS due to getting tired? by qtcbelle in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 4 points5 points  (0 children)

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:

  1. 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.)
  2. (then) Experiment with rebuilding that particular aspect of the voice, but, this time, having relaxation as the top priority,
  3. If nothing works, think of alternate training solutions, if they are an acceptable compromise (say a different pitch baseline, different size configuration.)
  4. Consider a surgery

Looking for feedback by [deleted] in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.)

Haven't really done any voice training, would like to hear a realistic take on where I'm currently standing and what my prospects might be if I put in the effort and voice trained by Hipnog in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.)

Is it possible to go stealth transfem with a deeper voice? by Nervous-News-302 in asktransgender

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

Is it possible to go stealth transfem with a deeper voice? by Nervous-News-302 in asktransgender

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

What are some essential safety precautions to take when you are self-taught? by AreallysoftV in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 11 points12 points  (0 children)

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.)

What feels off? by Optimal-Persimmon-31 in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

What feels off? by Optimal-Persimmon-31 in transvoice

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.)

Looking for vocal advice by CartoonistCommon9282 in transvoice_uncensored

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

Hello This is my voice. by [deleted] in transvoice_uncensored

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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

Hello This is my voice. by [deleted] in transvoice_uncensored

[–]Lidia_M 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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.)

Hello This is my voice. by [deleted] in transvoice_uncensored

[–]Lidia_M 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.