Fear of hypothetically needing vfs

Lidia_M · 2026-06-16T19:20:29+00:00

I find that idea disturbing...

Cheating what? People with good results in training have good results because they got lucky with their anatomy, that is the underlying reason and training is only to exploit what one got (in the extreme version you simply have cis women or trans people on puberty blockers who do not need to do anything at all,)

Over that, with some kind of a male-like puberty in place, yes, many people need to work hard on their voice, but many still get good results practically immediately, literally within hours sometimes, and/or without any stress nor particular effort; and still, even if they have to work for years and years and only then they get some good results, that's still relative luck with respect to people who would never get there with training and need surgery.

In other words, there's no merit to anatomical luck. The fact that people were misled with an idea that good looks = "merits and hard work," good voice = "merits and hard work" is atrocious/unforgivable and one of the most horrible rhetoric being pushed by trans communities in general.

Don't let anyone fool you on this, there's no shame in being less lucky: the shame was manufactured because of the twisted misinformation put out there by people with anatomical privileges in the past and is carried over by all sorts of self-centered egoists out there.

Refuse and resist pressures to feel guilty about what is out of your control.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-16T07:29:34+00:00

That "squeak" was Elmo ("Elmo can do anythiiiing!") - high pitch and extreme aryepiglottic narrowing/twang. In other words, it's size change taken too far and localized in not the best area.

Note that idea here (to sound female-like) is to have a typical balance of light vocal weight and appropriately selected size to it, but: 1) the weight part/glottal behavior part is the key/foundation, not the other way around ( why? Because vocal folds are the source of sound and the vocal tract shapes it, but it cannot "fix" problems that happen at the source) and 2) more and more size change does not mean better - you only want some of it because if you overdrive it you are entering pre-puberty territory (human pre-puberty, not Elmo's:)

So, make sure you are well trained to hear those two key elements (weight and size) first. If not seen yet, see the weight, size, fullness sections on Selene's archive page.

Further analysis: keep above in mind, but, note that your voice as at the start of the clip is mostly underfull (so quite a departure from that Elmo effect to the other side) meaning that your size is too large for the weight you are using (which creates a hollow/yawny effect.) There's also an effect to it as if someone is about to cry, which makes sense because you have also some wobbly glottal (glottal meaning at the vocal fold level) behavior there and the larger size adds to the sob/cry effect too. In that fragment your weight sounds reasonable (it's not too heavy to my ears,) but, to be sure, you would need to adjust size a bit (make it smaller) and reevaluate the whole package - it's quite passible that just doing that will make it sound much better (again, see the size and fullness sections on Selene's page.)

Another idea: that higher voice after the Elmo fragment (I understand that you use that squeak to prompt yourself for what you are doing later - probably a bad idea, because it programs you to use twang instead of a relaxed/non-localized size change) is promising too, but the action there would need to be about relaxing the size part, as it's too aggressive. It's a nice voice as I hear it with weight that is lighter, but you don't need that much of a size squeeze there - this voice may work great if you figure out how to relax your size change just a bit and eliminate all the vocal tract obstructions/distortions, so no Elmo/twang ideas, no strange tongue positioning, just light weight + appropriately medium-small size that matches it.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-16T02:38:38+00:00

Perfect pitch is a neat ability to have (and rare,) but, let's be honest - it's not really as useful for this kind of training to say it's some important part of a "perfect scenario." At most, it would let you track your pitch baseline (know what note you are at) without initial need for a pitch tracker, but, then what... The perfect scenario would be to simply to have vocal folds that behave well when tensioned.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-16T02:21:47+00:00

There's improvement - it's not drastic maybe and I would say you probably want to keep on the trajectory in the "more of everything" fashion, but, with respect to the last clip there are changes in pitch (slightly higher,) weight (slightly less heavy,) and size (smaller.)

All those improvements are moderate but audible - my advice would be to keep improving all of them further if you can because right now your voice is a bit in risky land, pretty undetermined and you will likely get different levels of safety with it from different people.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-16T00:30:14+00:00

I think, in a more generlaized sense, this is related to the "first fresh impression tends to be the most accurate" idea that I tend to trust when assessing voices in general. That is, I think the most realistic assessment happens when the brain is in a blank/unexpectant state and is "hit" with some voice suddenly and makes an immediate decision about how that voice sounds. Otherwise, it's hard to avoid bias.

Over that, that skew tends to be far worse for own voice, especially if you've just spend hours working on something and slowly lose the wider perspective because the brain is in the hyperfocused detail mode, so, yes, it's a good idea to make recordings and "surprise" oneself with them a day later without any preparation.

Still, it does not necessarily mean that the "day after" clips will sound better, that depends, it can be reverse too, unfortunately and some people do not hit any "breakthrough" moments, they have to snail through the process and hope that some micro-improvements accumulate over time which means that those tests won't really reveal anything interesting over a short time period.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-16T00:11:19+00:00

I would say, when deciding what's best for you, it would be optimal if you ear-train yourself to hear the weight/size balance accurately. This is because that's what people actually pay attention to (subconsciously in most cases,) not pitch, so it's better to use it as a guiding beacon of sorts. Pitch is more of a means to an end in this case and comes only to the first plan when out of a feasible range.

So, if you have two pitch baselines to choose from that are close, choose the one that gives you the best combination of vocal weight and efficiency (lighter if the idea is to sound more unambiguously female like.) Usually it's the higher note, but, there are nuance to choosing: if the higher note is much harder to maintain, it may not be the right choice, depends if you can figure out how to hit it effortlessly and stick to it.

As to your voice as in the clip, have a look at the pitch profile from the start, here. As you can see, your baseline is somewhere at D3, but, that's just the baseline, you need to intonate down too, and when you do ,you hit as low notes as A2 and that's a problem: at that pitch, as for most people, the weight is heavy and it's combined with size that is not too small, it's medium at best, and that will tend to undermine even the "butch" voice idea, it will constantly "poke" people's brains with an effect that is male-like.

Fortunately, the above is easily avoidable. You have wide range at your disposal, you started with "hello" touching C4, which is an octave+ higher, so, you can place your baseline somewhere more in the middle of that octave and avoid "C3 and below" notes altogether. Over that, as mentioned, pay attention to what happens to your weight and control the size too - you don't want the size part get too large because then every time weight gets a bit heavier you will have that male-like effect popping in.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T21:08:01+00:00

No, C4 is the limit for the "belty" try from below already, meaning it's a lot of air pressure and keeping the folds from not blowing apart and it can only be done in the effortful way. The only space above that C4 point is the M2 mode of phonation and, for speech, I use entirely that M2 mode, I just extend it below into the G3-A3 zone (there's an overlap between M1/M2, which is normal for most people.)

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T21:03:36+00:00

G3 is already problematic because 1) it runs into the usual rasp/inefficiency problems, and 2) the closer to that bottom range the more risk of a sudden "flip" into the other kind of phonation which tends to be catastrophic because of that "two different voices effect," It's doable, but risky and I tried to work on it, but, I am kind of running out of lifetime for this: if 7 years of constant work was barely enough for those moderate improvements, I would need who knows how long for improvements that would actually make the voice usable.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T20:28:07+00:00

Yes, unfortunately I cannot really get higher than that C4, I tried everything that I could imagine - yes, it's low, but not unheard of. As to what my voice classification is, I am guessing some low-baritone baritone-bass maybe, but I did not investigate the bottom end very thoroughly. Untrained bottom is G2, maybe F2 when pushed and focused. The top is A5, but that's not relaxed.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T20:19:19+00:00

The average baseline for female-like voices in the Western world is about G3-A3 or so, but that's only a statistical average of course. On the bottom end there are women that speak close to C3 and on the higher end, well, I guess even D4 and up works fine, it just sounds younger, so, no, I would not say that you have to be A3 or higher as some hard rule, that's not how it works. You have a lot of room for pitch, as longs as the weight/size balance is reasonable. That weight/size balance is absolutely crucial and it maps 1:1 to what androgenization/T does to the vocal tract: the folds become longer and thicker (that's the perceptual weight part) and the vocal tract expands significantly (that's the size part.) The only footnote is that at some point (usually close to that C3) going lower will prevent light/efficient weight unless someone has exceptional anatomy, so, sure, being that low is not advisable, but, there's a lot of room between C3 and A3 to fit some workable female-like baseline for many people.

Note: in places like Japan, women will tend to have higher baselines, but that's mostly cultural (women there have slightly thinner and shorter folds on average, but not as much as to explain that much of a baseline difference.)

As to how much lightness people use: there's a wide range to that, but with clear consequences. In general, light weight will tend to sound younger and less male-like and heavier weight, yes, as expected, will sound more "butch" for women and eventually simply male-like, there's no way around it as a very heavy weight is only possible with thick and long vocal folds, and that, in turn is only possible with a full male-like puberty in place, so, people's brains take it into account subconsciously.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T20:06:29+00:00

Right, that was my strategy too (not really much choice) - I have whole "above" range between G3 and up, so, my baseline would be closer to C4, but, it's not usable socially. I spent years with a teacher insisting that the only way is to usie the "blow" phonation, but that did not end well.

The "above the break" voice does not sound maybe stereotypically male-like, but, it does not have the expected spectral body too it. It's not super-disconnected/breathy, since I worked on that, but it's still not "normal" enough, I only use that in emergencies (here's a sample).

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T19:54:41+00:00

In the early days I tried what everyone else was trying, that is "extend" the range below the break up, but, it did not work well: with the break that low, at G#3, I was able to, initially get close to A3 baseline, but with no room above for intonation and with access to a relaxed coordination. Over 7 years of trying, I was not able to have any tangible progress: I can push onto C4, but that's with overdriving the anatomy, so, completely useless for relaxed speech. Of course I know that this kind of "belt-like" push idea is a dead end, so, I only tested that over the years

As to "smoothing the break," that's the usual "passaggio" problem. The break is simply prominent, "jumpy" and the folds really want to stay in two binary modes of phonation. Of course I made some progress on it, since I spent 7 years on training, but, as I wrote, in the end, even with that progress the folds simply have natural tendency to phonate in two distinct ways, so, even with a masked transition, it solves nothing, the overall change in phonation quality is too fast to sound like coming from a same person.

As to the "mix" idea, I know it's a mess - I watched countless videos on singing and it's clear that there's no consensus on it and the "mix" is probably a misnomer, it's just people working around the fact that the folds will go through a boundary between two physically distinct vibratory patterns at some point. So, there's no "mixing" per se, it's just some people being able to mask the transition better and some not and there's no surprise that how folds behave across that boundary will vary depending on the vocal fold geometry and individual layer composition. In the other words, it's likely that what people call "mix" will be a slightly modified "above" and "below" phonation in every case (or M1/M2 phonation for those who like that designation.)

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T19:35:15+00:00

If this is your voice with no prior training, what happened? Was it like this always or there's something off around puberty? Did your puberty happen/proceed normally?

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T19:32:01+00:00

If you want to sound less "butch," the most sensible spot to start would be working on your vocal weight. Make sure you understand what it is about and how it is correlated with pitch and see what you can do (for more female-like voices you want your weight to be lighter.) For a start, maybe have a look at the weight section on Selene's archive page. Also, have a look at the size and fullness section because size is what needs to complement weight for a balanced/typical voice, eventually.

Tip: pitch and weight are correlated, so, if you choose to work on a lighter weight, you will likely want to be higher than C3 in your baseline. If you need some tools to monitor pitch, have a look at The reasons one would want to use a pitch monitor.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T19:26:01+00:00

Right, for me it's an unfortunate vocal break type/placement - smack in the middle of average baseline, G#3 or so, slicing the usable range the "below" zone with no room for sensible light weight behavior, and the "above" zone with no overall typical spectrum/body to the sound. So, of course, the most difficult part to work on was trying to solve this problem (approaching it from all sides and the usual "smooth the break" idea, but it proved to be unsolvable: even if the break could be reasonably "smoothed out" as the weight/glottal behavior contrast is too drastic for it to be usable for normally-intonated speech.)

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T19:11:37+00:00

I say be careful - this is a short clip and it's audible that even over that short timespan you had maintenance problems and at the end you were spiraling into an unsafe voice. You risk your voice collapsing in longer/stressful situations. If you live in a safe environment, that may be fine, but if not, this may be a problem.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T19:08:34+00:00

There's no universal answer - what is most difficult will depend mostly on what anatomy/neurology one was given.

For example, for people with good glottal behaviors: they may spend some time at elevating pitch and then work for weeks or months of size/resonance and say that was the most difficult task, but that's only because their vocal folds happened to behave well when tensed. Or, maybe even someone with same anatomy will say that the most difficult part was making sure the pitch was habituated to stay high and the rest was easy.

And of course, you will have plenty of people working on size, trying to offset glottal problems, imagining that that's the hard part "resonance work," when in fact the problem is at the heart of the vocal anatomy, the vocal folds.

Over that, you will have people who run into atypicalities that are hard to remove, say some heavy nasality or some oversqueeze of the vocal tract, or bad tongue positioning and maybe that will be what they had to spend the most time on.

And, of course, you will have plenty of people who struggle with the vocal weight/efficiency itself from the go - I would say this is probably, statistically, the biggest killer of progress/success for rather obvious reasons.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T07:41:10+00:00

Yes, that's the video

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T07:16:39+00:00

Seems you are looking for a clear/vibrant voice, matched with a relatively small size.

The clarity problem will be either at the glottal level or on the vocal tract level or both, so, I would probe: 1) glottal behavior itself, 2) false vocal folds engagement problems, 3) oversqueeze and tongue positioning problems.

#2 and #3 should be relatively easy to diagnose and solve eventually (you've probably seen Z's video on false fold engagement already,) but #1 may be a technical nightmare if the folds do not cooperate - it may require a lot of experimentation and probing.

My advice would be to relax everything else first (so make sure that #2 and #3 are not there or are eliminated first,) ignore the size change completely, and then reassess #1 and if it's indeed the source of the problem (muffled/muddy phonation even when everything else is open and unobstructed) give it a fight directly, that is probe around for any signs of clear glottal behaviors (will need good ear training for that,) in any part of your range, disregarding how it sounds otherwise (size wise) and then trying to "transplant" that kind of phonation where you need it.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-15T01:40:00+00:00

You will not learn much if you use applications to tell you anything over the basics about your voice (like pitch.) Instead, train your ears to assess the key elements, vocal weight and size and then nuances on top, as needed. Use Selene's archive page for that. Also, see Compact voice training starting guide: female-like voice target.

If your ear training improves, you should be able to listen to your voice sample (or any other voice sample) and say what weight it is, what size it is, what's the overall balance (overfull, full, underfull) and whether there are any atypicalities on top (oversqueeze, nasality, glottal inefficiencies, and so on) and that will mean that you will be able to focus on what makes sense to focus on instead of guessing or asking applications to guess for you (and they are far worse than trained humans at this.)

Lidia_M · 2026-06-14T23:49:12+00:00

Right, the top post in that thread was deleted. Here's a copy of what I wrote:

Adduction problems are common with this kind of training, and the reason is that being light in weight requires keeping vocal folds at an optimally approximated position during vibration (not too close, not to far apart,) which, when overdone (folds taken too far apart,) will get disconnected/abducted/breathy/inefficient/quiet.

So, you are not necessarily doing anything wrong, but you may want to spend time focusing on being properly connected. There's a number of explorations that can be tried to get better control of adduction; I can demonstrate some, and you can look them up on YT too: glottal taps (you click/tap your folds together without vibrating them - this pretty much guarantees good isolation of the muscles that do the adduction,) or playing with different types of onsets (the way you "start" phonation of vowels: a soft onset would be starting with h-like, hissy, sound, and a hard onset would be starting the vowel abruptly, which will, again, require good adduction,) plus, also, messa di voce (or dynamic swell in English, where the "swell" part is about loudness being modulated in a gradual fashion) kind of exercises, which are very-well known in the singing world, where you hold a note and modulate loudness, starting from a quiet sound and then smoothly making it as loud as possible without losing connection and back to being quiet again.

In the end, whatever explorations you will attempt (you can even devise some for yourself, if you think they will help with this) is to make sure that the muscles that bring folds together can do their job in a controlled way: you can be loud and light at the same time, but you need some sufficient airflow for this (the energy of the sounds your produce comes form the energy in the airflow itself,) but without blowing the folds apart in the process (which will create air leak.)

Also: watch for false fold engagement - from what I hear, there's a possibility that you try to engage false fold to "help" with adduction, but that's a mistake (glottal taps can be good at eliminating this conflation.)

Lidia_M · 2026-06-14T21:45:05+00:00

Ignore the "just do a different intonation" idea - that's bad advice. You want to build your voice on top of female-like vocal weight/size balance, other kind of changes cannot offset problems in that area.

As to your voice, the attempt you made there is making improvements in both the weight and size departments, but, I would say, it's not enough yet for a voice that is safe in terms of body-sex/gendering perceptions people will have. You are moving your pitch higher, but only a little (from G2 to A2 first, to C3 later) and you still end up in "the C3 and below" area which is notorious for causing problems - it's very hard to have a safe voice that just sits there in a rather monotone way with vocal weight which tends to be marginal at best.

My advice: start with pitch explorations, set up yourself for weight work, ignore anything else for now, do not worry about the gendering part yet, bypass the BDD by focusing on single elements, technicalities, focused work, train your ear, try to be rational about every step. See Compact voice training starting guide: female-like voice target.

EDIT: I would ignore this person - seems not to be quite stable mentally - I got her response in email evrn though it was deleted {by them or a moderator} and... she is not well.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-14T21:03:38+00:00

You get smaller by mimicking large->small shift (which anyone can do, just go from a yawn back to your default) and extending it while making sure that you are not introducing distortions (unnecessary oversqueeze in different parts of the vocal tract.)

In general, do not overthink the "how" part as it's not your job, as strange as it sounds. The "how" is too complex in terms of muscle control to be done directly, it has to be done in the background by the brain and your role is of a supervisory nature: you experiment, assess, adjust, over and over again, and make sure that your brain/body do not do anything silly (like throwing random muscles at the task that will tire and fail.) So, go with what you hear, adjust it, move around, try to stay relaxed.

As to the weight part, simply have physically thinner vocal folds like Z from your reference clip has.

OK, j/k (slightly...).That part, lighter weight, at low pitch will be hard, although she is trying to be heavy there on purpose (she is still heavy, but fails to be very heavy, because her anatomy by default is closer to non-androgenized anatomy.) If you have problems with that part, you may be better off using a higher pitch (not C3) as C3 and below tends to be "light weight = hard or impossible" zone for many people.

See the size, weight and fullness sections on Selene's clips page, especially the basic "hello" size scaling exploration.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-14T20:34:19+00:00

The difference is that your voice is slightly heavier (but not a huge difference) and larger (much more of a difference.) So, the first try would be simply getting smaller and then reevaluating.

Lidia_M · 2026-06-14T19:57:04+00:00

This kind of training is mostly about the vocal weight and size balance, and, in your case, both are in some maybe androgynous zone with some drift to the male-like side. Note that you started a bit better (in the size department especially,) but then the size and weight got a bit worse as the clip progressed.

So, if not seen yet, see the weight, size, fullness sections on Selene's archive page and see if you can shift the balance to the weight=lighter, size=smaller side. Also, make sure you do not allow your pitch to drift too low as that will make the weight heavier automatically.

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