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Nothing gets you read faster than a voice that doesn't match your
appearance. Many gender folk dress up to the nines and look like
goddesses... until they open their mouths. Suddenly, in spite of the
grace and curves they turn into truck drivers or lumberjacks right
before your eyes. Clothes may make the man, but it is voice that makes
the woman.
Whether you are a crossdresser or transsexual, developing a truly
FEMALE voice - not just a feminine one - is of paramount concern. When
I began my transition, there was electrolysis to worry about,
mannerisms... but it was voice that seemed to me the greatest
obstacle.
Like most, I tried simply feminizing my voice, softening the voice
I had. I tried raising my pitch artificially, arriving at that bad
falsetto that forms the stereotype of the transgendered marking them
as parodies rather than the real thing. Eventually I even consider
vocal chord surgery as a last resort.
Voice surgery made me nervous though. I had a fairly decent singing
voice, I like to do character voices, I liked to sound dramatic when I
spoke. But the thought of being read every time I uttered a word was
enough to tip the balance to consider voice surgery, even though all
end-results I had heard were not very convincing AND I had heard
horror stories of those who as a result of the surgery lost their
voices completely!
I had just about resigned myself to that risk when, a few months
into full-time, I stumbled into something quite by accident that has
made the difference in my career, my relationships, in my life as a
whole: I learned to sound female.
Notice I did not say "to talk like a woman", but rather
"to sound female". This is because the secret I found is not
in the way one speaks but the way one sounds. I had been trying out
different voices that day (as I did most days), sometimes trying to
sound like a squeaky teenager, other times like a mature matron. For
weeks I had been struggling with no progress to speak of. And then,
this one day, suddenly something happened. My voice "slipped
gears" and came down in a different place than it had ever been.
All at once, in one broad stroke, the TIMBER of my voice had turned
female. I couldn't believe it! I actually SOUNDED female! I tried
saying this and that and EVERYTHING sounded female. This was
incredible! After all my fears and yearnings... well, it was almost
like magically being transformed into a woman!
It was just about quitting time when this happened. At the time, I
was working as Melanie, but still going home to my wife as Dave. The
kids did not know about my transition yet. So each night, I would
leave work, take off the nail polish and make-up, change my clothes
and go home. So, I decided it was time to go back to my
"drab" voice and do Dave again for the night. But when I
tried to revert, I couldn't find my old voice. I tried again -
nothing! Suddenly I felt that I really HAD been transformed! That
somehow my whole voice box had been changed to a female form! But this
was terrible!!! My wife was going to kill me!
After half an hour of unsuccessful attempts to get out of voice,
there was nothing left to do but face the music. I drove home, stepped
inside. Mary said, "How was your day?" I replied,
"Fine", but it wasn't Dave's voice, it was Melanie's voice,
and Mary threw a fit!
"What's wrong with your voice?!", she demanded. I
explained what had happened and how I got stuck. She told me I had
darn well better figure out how to get my old voice back before the
kids woke up in the morning. Try as I might, I met with no success.
But then, over the course of an hour or so, my voice relaxed and the
old voice came back. I was saved!!! But then, I worried that I
couldn't get the new voice back again. After all, it happened by
accident, and I really didn't know what I had done. At first, I DID
lose the new voice. But then, I found it again, and practiced and
practiced going in and out all the rest of the night.
The next morning, the first thing I did when I woke up was try to
find the new voice again, and there it was, mine to command! Over the
following months, I worked on the fine points of my voice, adding all
the incidental elements that affected not only my sound, but the
manner in which I spoke. And now, over four years later and two years
after SRS, I can report that my new voice is fine. If I choose I can
still slip in and out of it at will. This voice has been crucial in my
career advancement, relationships and ,best of all, my female voice
has helped developed my sense of self as Melanie.
In this article, I will share with you how I did it and provide all
the steps you need to find your own female voice.
To begin, as I looked back over the path I had taken, I discovered
seven important tools for developing a feminine voice. Six of them
work on the femininity but the seventh is the "secret" that
actually makes one SOUND female. I'll describe each briefly, then
cover them all in greater detail. By name, the seven tools are Pitch,
Resonance, Dynamic Range, Annunciation, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Body
English.
Pitch:
Most people assume that the primary difference between men's and
women's voices is Pitch. But we shall see that the actually difference
in pitch between the sexes in minimal. In fact, the overlap of range
between the sexes allows for almost ANY individual to fall well within
accepted norms of pitch.
Resonance:
Resonance is the real secret of this method. Resonance is the
modulation of whatever pitch you have. It puts the envelope on the
voice that takes the pitch and assigns it Timbre. In the course of
this article I will describe a simple exercise anyone can do to find
that special place in their voice and develop a truly FEMALE
resonance.
Dynamic range:
Dynamic Range describes the difference between the highest highs
and the lowest lows that a person uses while speaking. Men use a very
narrow dynamic range, even though they are quite capable of extending
that range. It is simply a matter of training, not physiology. In
contrast, women use a much WIDER dynamic range, which is what gives
their voices more of a "sing/song" effect.
Enunciation:
Enunciation is the way you pronounce your words. Just as one might
do a dialect, there is a female dialect that transcends languages and
cultures. I will describe a means for developing a fully feminine
enunciation.
Vocabulary:
Yes there are masculine and feminine words. In our culture, certain
words are almost exclusively reserved for males and others for
females. I will cover some of these and show you how to be on the
lookout for more.
Grammar:
Being masculine or feminine has a lot to do with brokering power.
When one forms words into sentences, the ORDER of words as well as
modifiers and parentheticals change the position of power of the
speaker. We'll look into ways to adopt the "power level"
appropriate to the many roles played by either sex.
Body Language:
Body Language is they way you move while you talk. In fact, it has
an actual impact of how the voice itself will sound. By using the
proper Body English while you speak, you can improve the femininity of
your voice - even on the phone!
Now that we've seen the overview of what will be covered, let's
move on to the first of these areas in depth.
What do Susanne Pleshette, Marline Detrich, Cher, and Bea Arthur
have in common? They all have VERY low voices! In fact, they have
voice LOWER in pitch than most of the male population. However, we
would never mistake them for men! In fact at least three of the four
are generally considered rather sexy. When women have low voices they
are not considered masculine. Rather, their voices are referred to as
"husky".
How can they get away with that? Because the difference between the
average male voice and the average female voice is only about 1/2
octave. That's right! Just 1/2 octave! It is not the pitch that makes
them sound female, but the Resonance!
Because each of us has at least a 1 1/2 octave range to their voice
and most of us have two octaves or more, there is a lot of overlap
between the pitches of the two sexes if there is only a 1/2 octave
AVERAGE difference. That means there is just half an octave higher
that some women can go that no men can and only a half an octave lower
that some men can go that no women can.
My voice now is only 2 or 3 notes higher on the scale than it was
before I started. But the audible impact is quite difference. That is
because it is not how HIGH you pitch your voice, but where you pitch
it FROM that makes all the difference! Once you get your voice coming
from the right place, it doesn't really matter what pitch it is at
all. And the added bonus is, with the Resonance secret we will
discover, you get 2 or 3 notes of increased pitch as well (which,
though not crucial, doesn't hurt!)
So let's move on to that area without further delay!
What is Resonance? Imagine an orchestra. Now imagine the same not
being played by a violin, a trumpet, and an oboe. They all have
different sounds, even though they are all playing the same note. This
is because the tone they play is "modulated" differently.
Each has its own unique Resonance.
In a trumpet, that resonance is created in the coils. It is created
in the body of the violin or in a cello. That body is a chamber in
which the sound can vibrate, mixing and intermixing to create complex
wave forms with many striking and identifying harmonics.
That chamber is like our own voice box. Men have a larger voice
box. That's what makes their Adam's apple larger and their voices add
more low-end resonance. Women have a smaller voice box and as a result
have less low end resonance. So, in a sense, men have MORE harmonics
than women. This is fortunate for those in the masculine gender who
wish to be perceive in the feminine. The whole trick is to learn to us
LESS of your voice. You've got it already, you are using it already.
Its not something you have to add to sound female, but something you
need to suppress. The problem is, that when men go into a falsetto,
they suppress ALL of the harmonics, resulting in that silly
high-pitched voice that is surely a dead give-away.
Let's try an experiment to drive the point home. Put your finger of
one hand on the top of your larynx, at the top of your Adam's apple.
Place the fingers of your other hand at the very bottom of your
larynx, below the Adam's apple. Now, speak aloud in your normal
masculine voice. You will note that both the top AND bottom of the
larynx vibrate almost equally as you speak.
Keeping your fingers in place, go into a falsetto and speak. You
will note that there is hardly ANY vibration in either the top OR
bottom! The exercises we are going to learn will allow you to create a
voice that vibrates ONLY at the bottom and NOT at the top. This
effectively cuts the part of the voice box used in half and thereby
loses the lowest of the harmonics, leaving almost EXACTLY the same
range of harmonics as a genetic female voice.
The female voice I've discovered feels like it sits
"behind" your normal speaking voice. After I had used it for
a while, I found there were two easy to get to this place - a place
your voice does not usually go while you are speaking. The first way
is with Falsetto, the second way is by gargling.
A. Falsetto:
Start with your highest falsetto. If you sound like a cartoon
character with big round ears that lives in Anaheim, you've got it!
Now take that voice and bring the pitch down as low as you can WITHOUT
BREAKING YOUR VOICE. You see, if you break your voice it will
"come out front" again, and you'll be using the full voice
box for modulation - just what you don't want.
Take your voice down as low as you can go in falsetto. That's the
spot. You will notice that neither the top nor bottom of your larynx
is vibrating very much, if at all. Now, before I explain what to do
once you get to that spot, let's examine the other method of arriving
there. If you try both methods, one will work best for you. Also, by
trying both, you will have a better sense - a "cross
reference" of where your voice needs to be.
B. Gargling:
Just go back in your throat the way you do when you gargle and make
that standard gargling sound. When you do, you will automatically
tighten up your throat. You will find that your voice is resonating
from exactly the same place either with the lowest falsetto or the
gargling. However, with the gargling, you can actually feel both the
top and bottom of your larynx vibrating.
The point you want to reach for this voice is the center between
where you put your voice to gargle and the lowest falsetto you have.
Some people like to do character voices for fun. If you can do a
little old man or old woman, say "The Alludium Q38 Space
Modulator, or do the Wicked Witch of the West, you are very near the
spot.
As I mentioned before, the first time I found this voice I hit it
by accident. Then I got stuck. So if you try this exercise and are not
living full-time as a woman, make sure you have an hour or so to find
your way back to male voice just in case.
Now, what you are actually learning to do is develop one set of the
muscles on your larynx while not using the others at all. This is a
tough trick - kind of like wiggling your ears or patting your head
while you rub your tummy. It takes practice - LOT'S of practice.
But don't practice too much right at the start. Once you find the
voice it is such a magical experience that you want never to come
back. But you will find that using the lower set of muscles to do all
the work leads to hoarseness at first. This is your body's way of
telling you that you should knock off for a while.
I found that during the first week I used this voice, I could only
go about half an hour or so before I got hoarse. Then, I had the good
sense to rest my voice. Just like doing exercises for the body, you
don't want to do too much too fast of you will injure yourself.
For me, it took about six months to fully develop my voice to the
point I could use it all day long. Then, it took another six months to
fully develop loudness and dynamic range. But these things did come
with practice and patience. I imagine that eventually, the other
muscles at the top might atrophy if, like me, you just don't use them
at all. However, for those of you switching back and forth, both will
stay in tone and like me, even now after four years, I can still call
up the old voice if I have to. For me, that's about once a year when I
need to demonstrate to a friend that it is possible to do this.
So, don't push it. I'm no medical doctor. I can't tell you exactly
what's going on physically, nor can I guarantee you won't cause
yourself problems. I can merely say that for me, I have been using
this voice for over four years with no apparent ill effects.
Now, trying to describe a voice in a text article is a bit
difficult. I understand this. That is why I've created a DVD on
developing a female voice.
You may wish to Order
the "how to" program on DVD for just $24.95 or on audio CD for
only $19.95 OR Order
the New Online Edition and get BOTH Programs for $19.95! You'll
get instant access to BOTH the Video and Audio programs that you can download
and also stream online!
Now that we've had this word from our sponsor, we return to our
regularly scheduled program.
Having covered Resonance, and discounted Pitch, its time to move on
to the other five steps that can feminize your voice. Remember,
Resonance creates a FEMALE voice, these other well-known steps are
useful in FEMINIZING whatever voice you have.
When I first started using my new female voice, the muscles were
only developed enough to create a very monotone sound. In fact, it
took me six months to get a good Dynamic Range.
As I mentioned earlier, Dynamic Range is the difference between the
highest pitch and the lowest pitch used in conversation. Women use
this range to put emphasis into their conversation. It brings extra
meaning to the words beyond their normal definitions by putting a
different "spin" on them.
Men use a different technique for emphasis: they get louder or
softer within a narrow range of tones. So, in conversation, a man will
"punch" some words and hold back others. In this manner they
"make their point". In contrast, women will rise and lower
in tone while keeping roughly the same amplitude or loudness. This is
a striking difference in speech patterns and is a key identifier of a
masculine or feminine personality. Keep in mind that masculine women
will adopt the loudness approach in monotone, and the feminine man
will rise and fall in tonality with even amplitude.
You'll notice the difference in the way women speak when you call
them on the phone. If you are a man and call a company getting the
female receptionist, her voice will be up in the scale, high in note
so as to be cheerful and non-threatening. If she hears a man calling
her she will stay there at that range of pitch. But if you are a woman
calling in and get the same receptionist, she will answer the phone
the same way, but as soon as she hears that it is a woman calling her,
she will lower her tonal range.
This happens because men control the power in the world, especially
in business. As a result, as a woman, unless you are very assertive by
nature, you don't want to appear threatening. Men in business compete
with men and also with women who are threatening. However, since women
have to stick together to get anything done in a male world, they must
form a conspiracy.
When men in business get together its a competition, when women in
business get together its a conspiracy. And this difference in
approach and status is reflected in the higher or lower tonal range
that a woman adopts depending upon the gender of the other party.
Similarly, if a woman IS assertive and using amplitude to punch her
emphasis, a non-assertive woman will keep her voice high to show she
is not a threat.
Now, this is easily seen in women because they naturally use a
wider dynamic range. But have you ever noticed how a man's voice goes
up a few notes whenever he fears a superior is angry with him?
Now another aspect of Dynamic range is "stair step
tonalities". What I mean by this is that in every group of
several words a woman will string together in a sentence, usually no
two are spoken at the same pitch. This is what makes women's voices
sound so "sing song". In fact, they ARE singing!
Sometimes the stair steps go down to lower into that conspiratorial
tone. Other times they go up to raise the emotional stakes. Often they
rise and fall like sine waves to rush up under a phrase, then retreat
like a wave on the sand. Speaking in stair step tonalities is best
learned by listening to others, but it is learned, not intrinsic. Just
like Dynamic Range, it is a function of conditioning rather than
biology.
So, Dynamic Range is largely a masculine/feminine issue rather than
a male/female one. How to learn it, however, is best covered in our
next area.
Enunciation describes the shape into which words are formed. Men
lean toward denotation rather than connotation. In other words, men
get the job done as quickly as possible with the most focus. When
speaking they hit the edges of words like square waves, cutting each
one like they were chopping carrots.
In contrast, femininity more connotation oriented. Women are not as
concerned with the meaning of a word so much as its context, and that
context is expressed in a more flowing, graceful manner. Women will
round the edges of their words to avoid cliffs and walls.
Believe it or not, the best source I've found as an example of this
is with Valley Girls. Val Speak for girls puts an envelope on the
words that sing songs with stair steps, rounds the words and flows the
hidden agenda of meaning in the background context.
I suggest that you rent either Whoopi Goldberg's stand up comedy
routine on video tape or the movie "Valley Girls". Both of
these have the feminine dialect down pat.
It is MUCH easier to go overboard to an extreme and then tone it
down than to try to build up from where you are now. There is so much
initial embarrassment trying to speak female AND each step requires
addition work and additional habits to be broken. You learn one level
of success then have to unlearn that to get to the next. But if you
jump all the way to the extreme and use that, it will begin to average
out with the annunciation you are using now and will tone itself down
until it is right on the mark for normal conversation as today's
woman.
Now, I referred above to the "feminine dialect". But it
is much more than that. IN fact, the enunciation and dynamic range of
femininity is applied to every language and every culture in the
world. The words and grammar may change, but the connotation of the
feminine meaning is a universal language that can be understood from
woman to woman in times and worlds apart.
Still, it is not stilted or defined. In fact, it is quite flexible.
Women do not live a single role, but many, as mother, wife, career
woman, friend. As such, she plays variations of the feminine dialect
depending upon the role without ever losing the femininity. This can
be accomplished by realizing that the feminine dialect is not one
thing but several blended together. As a woman shifts from role to
role, she uses the same tools, but with different emphasis depending
upon the situation.
The voice that I use with my girlfriends is different than the
voice I use when lecturing at work to my interns. The voice I use with
my boyfriend is different than the voice I use with my wife. Get away
from the binary, free yourself from definition. Go with the flow, be
flexible, and play with variations on a theme.
Think about the phrase, "I Got a pain in my gut." Who
would say that, a man or a woman? A woman might say, "I have a
pain in my stomach.", or, if she really wanted to be obnoxious,
"My tummy hurts..." (GAK!)
The point is, that some words are more masculine or feminine that
others. Part of this again derives from the brokering of power. For
example, a man usually "wants" something while a woman
"would like" something. "Want" means
"lack" and implies "need" which further implies
the right to have. This reflects the aggressive side of the power
equation.
On the other hand, "would like" states a preference, not
an intent, and therefore runs the idea up the flagpole to see if
anyone is against it before acting. This reflects the submissive side
of the power equation.
You can notice the difference in the way men and women will order
at the speaker of a drive-through fast food restaurant. A man will
say, "I want a Big Mac.", whereas a woman will say,
"I'd like a salad, please."
This point was driven home to me when I was working on a movie as a
Director of Photography. When I worked this position as a man, I would
just tell the crew exactly what I wanted and they would hop to! But on
the first day of this two day shoot I was working with a crew I had
not met before. AND it was my first D P job as a woman.
So, I went to work as usual, telling everyone exactly what I
wanted: "I want a 1K mini in that corner as a set light and a
half K kicker with a yellow filter as a hair light." Nobody
moved. I looked around wondering why nothing was happening. Finally I
just said, "Okay, let's go to work", and they did. But they
went ever so slowly. And the more I told them what I wanted, the
slower and less precise they became.
At the end of the day, we had only accomplished half of what I had
wanted to. We were WAY behind schedule. These guys had moved five
times slower than I was used to. So I went home and thought about it
and then it hit me... What if they didn't like being told what a woman
"wanted"?
So, the next day, I brought the crew together and said, "Today
I'd like to put a little light back there to light up the set and
could you rig something to get some yellow light on her hair?"
They looked at each other wondering if this was the same person, then
the crew captain said, "Okay, let's get to work", and they
moved twice as fast as the previous day.
By the time we were finished we had made up all the lost time.
Somehow by my telling them what I "wanted" I had emasculated
the crew, because I was putting myself above them in skill. But by
telling them what I'd like, they worked to give it to me. Of course,
they still worked only half as fast as they would have when I was a
male DP, but at least it was twice as fast as the day before. So, as a
woman, you're going to have make workers not give you the same effort
you would get as a man, but at least you can limit the damage by
telling them what you'd like, even though you know exactly what you
want!
Now another thing men do is slur. They might say, "I hafta
gota the store". "Hafta" is not a word! "Gota"
is not a word! A woman might say, "I have to go to the
store." Or even more, she might say, "I ought to."
"Have to" is driven by need." "Ought to"
is driven by should". Its really a question of Instigation vs.
Obligation and is yet another example of the Power Equation in our
society. Look for those power words and if you want to be feminine,
avoid them like the plague.
Grammar deals with sentence structure and parentheticals. Keeping
on the Power Equation concept, men are supposed to be assertive in our
society, women submissive. Women can have moods, but not opinions. Men
might say they were "going to do" something, but women would
say "I'm thinking of doing" something.
Now, I use the terms "men" and "women" because
those are the standards for our society by sex. But it is really (like
all of these points) a matter of masculine vs. feminine. It is the
issue of cooperation vs. conflict. This article is not about breaking
stereotypes, but becoming a stereotype. Once you have arrived, BELIEVE
ME, you will find LOT'S of reasons to break them!!
But first you must go to the extreme and then tone it back. Keep in
mind that there is hardly a woman alive who does all these things. But
by using most of them regularly in different combinations, you can
have your overall speech pattern fall more within the feminine range
than it does now.
They last area we will explore is Body Language. This is simply the
way you move when you speak. Body Language supports voice and voice
supports Body Language. If a feminine voice is like a song, feminine
Body Language is like a dance. When you put the song and the dance
together, they create harmonies between them that underscore and
counterpoint, making the entire process a symphony.
The most interesting part is that voice and Body
Language actually
change each other. Try saying something while standing absolutely
still. Then try speaking with broad gestures. You will hear a
difference in your voice just because you are moving.
Many gender folk using the phone get so nervous they freeze up
physically and it can be heard loud and clear in their voice. But if
you move in rhythm to your thoughts, your voice will follow. Even on
the phone you will sound more feminine AND more human!
IN CONCLUSION
So, this is what I have to offer from my personal experiences. I
hope you find it of interest and use. Again, if you feel you could
benefit from some "real time" instruction, you can Order
the "how to" program on DVD for just $24.95 or on audio
CD for only $19.95 OR Order
the New Online Edition and get BOTH Programs for $19.95!
You'll get instant access to BOTH the Video and Audio programs that
you can download and also stream online!
When I originally wrote the article How To Develop a Female Voice
years ago, it was at the request of friends in the gender community
who kept asking me how I achieved my own results. The article led to a
video tape that has become the standard training tape for this subject
around the world. It is even used by speech therapists at major
universities, and not just for gender folk either! In fact, the tape
has become something of bible on male/female speech differences. Well,
all this quite surprised me, as I was simply trying to answer
questions people had asked me so that they might use the same
techniques to arrive at the voice they were trying to achieve.
Since that time, many people have written me with success stories,
but a number have also written to say they are having a bit more
difficulty using the method. I hate to hear that, especially
considering the importance of voice to the image these people want to
project. So, I've gone back and tried to offer some different
perspectives on the same technique in the hope of making it more
accessible to everyone. With that purpose in mind, here is a follow-up
article to the original with a new approach.
When trying to develop a female voice, it's not so much a matter of
pitch as one of resonance. The trick is that the male voice box is
about twice as large in size as the average female voice box. So,
deeper harmonics are created around the same pitch. That is why if a
woman and a man sing the same note it sounds different. The pitch is
the same, but women don't have the low harmonics.
When you speak in falsetto, you tighten all the muscles around your
voice box, killing ALL the harmonics. When you speak normally, you
relax them all and get all the harmonics, even the low ones. But the
muscles that tighten on the voice box are not one set, but can be
trained to tighten on the top and stay loose on the bottom. When this
is done, the muscles clamp down on half of the voice box, effectively
cutting the resonance chamber to half size and deadening the low-end
harmonics. This produces an authentic female resonance voice at any
pitch.
The hard part is training yourself to clamp down on only one set
while keeping the other loose, since all your experience either clamps
both or neither. It is a bit like trying to pat your head and rub your
stomach at the same time, or perhaps more like learning to walk again
after an accident. The brain doesn't know how to do this thing and
must stumble around it for some time before the neuro pathways open up
and the way to control those muscles "clicks" at a
subconscious level. This can take a lot of time!
Those who do cartoon character voices or impressions for fun or
have done vocal exercises singing higher harmonies will have an easier
time finding the "feel" of what the body has to do. You can
gauge if you are doing it right by touching the top of your Adam's
apple with one hand and the bottom with the other as you speak. Speak
normally, both will vibrate. Speak in falsetto, neither will vibrate.
If you can get the bottom to vibrate while the top does not, you'll
have the voice.
I don't know if it is possible to get the top to vibrate while the
bottom doesn't, but I suspect the sound would not be as pleasing as if
the portion that vibrates is closer to the chest cavity which produces
a pleasing acoustic sound.
Words of warning are that these kinds of vocal exercises can easily
strain your voice, especially at first. Don't practice any longer than
a minute or two to start. Work your way up slowly to longer periods of
time, but never even approach the point at which you might get hoarse.
It would be a shame to permanently damage your voice when a little
patience could reward you with the voice you've always wanted.
Everyone has the capacity to find this new voice. When the voice
breaks at puberty, it is a sign that the voice is not merely lowering
as the voice box gets bigger. If that were the case, the resonance
would get deeper smoothly. Rather, muscle use around the voice box
changes to take advantage of the larger voice box. Until the muscles
learn to relax at both the top and the bottom, the voice jumps back
and forth between the fully relaxed voice and the half tight/half
relaxed voice you are now trying to relearn. The capability is still
there and the brain can be taught to remember, but it happened so long
ago that it currently has forgotten.
As a visual aid, imagine the voice of a child as having the shape
of a capital letter "I" representing the range of pitch in a
voice, with high notes toward the top and lower notes toward the
bottom. As a female child grows into a woman, the "I" gets
longer at the bottom, indicating that in addition to the high notes,
even lower ones have now been added to the vocal range.
In contrast, when a male child grows up, it is not just pitch that
lowers, but in addition, new low-end harmonics are added. In our
visualization, this would appear as if the letter "I" grew
an extra arm and became an upside down letter "Y". At the
high end, the voices between male and female are almost identical. But
as the male voice matures, it jumps back and forth over the hump of
the upside down "Y" from one side to the other as that extra
arm of low harmonics grows deeper. This is what we hear when the voice
breaks at puberty.
Eventually, the male voice settles into the new arm of the
"Y" and no longer falls into the old arm at all. So, it
still shares the high ground, but is now quite different in normal
speaking range. The good news is that the old arm of the original
"I" in which grown women still speak is still there. It is
just rusty and lost due to years of neglect. The trick, then, is to
help the brain find that old arm of the "Y" again and to
exercise those forgotten muscle pathways until that voice is once more
accessible.
For those who want to switch back and forth, a little practice now
and again in the female voice will keep the gears oiled. For those who
want to use the new voice all the time, the male-resonance side of the
upside down "Y" will eventually be forgotten by the brain,
just as the female side was once lost. Under those circumstances, you
wake up with the new voice and use it even when startled. In fact, it
would take a long period of time to retrain the old voice to come back
again - the reverse problem!
Well, that's it in a nutshell - the path to a female voice. But
even a female voice is not necessarily FEMININE! To sound like a woman
requires the proper resonance, but to sound like a lady require
training in Enunciation, Grammar, Vocabulary, Use of Pitch, Dynamic
Range, and even Body English to complement vocal patterns. If you feel
a little more help would be useful, you can always order my 49 minute
video on the subject.
I arrived at nine o'clock sharp and walked into the fanciest
doctors office I've ever seen. Dark green plush carpet , tasteful
antiques, about a million dollars worth of art on the wall. The
receptionist asked me to have a seat and said that the doctor was
running a little late today.
My stomach was doing the most interesting things down there. As is
usual in surgery I had been asked not to eat before coming in. It
might have also had something to do with the fact that I've never had
any surgery done before and the thought that this was the first big
unalterable step on the way to becoming the woman I've always needed
to be.
As I sat there, worrying, thinking about all the things that could
go wrong, I could still hear Dr. Mayer going through the list of
possible complications on my first visit, things like, scarring,
infection, trouble swallowing, and five or six other things I can't
remember. The one that scared me the most though, was that my voice
might just return to it's old pitch sometime after surgery. He said
what ever happened there was no way to fix it again and that I'd be
stuck with the way it turns out, good or bad. He made it clear that he
wasn't making any promises, or guaranteeing anything.
I asked Dr. Mayer, exactly what he was going to do to make my voice
change. He told me the technique was his idea, and that only he and
god could do this, and that neither of them was going to tell anyone
else. He said he was afraid that if he told how it was done, some fool
who wasn't as good as he was would try it and screw it up. Then the
technique would get a bad name. Well OK, I didn't like that much, but
squeamish as I am I'm probably better off not knowing.
I must have set in that waiting room for at least two hours, though
it seemed more like a week. Finally a nurse came and took me to a room
and got me into one of those cute little hospital nighties. Then I was
off to the operating room. I sat there for a long time, shivering,
wondering if this is just a dream. Then the nurse came back and
started doing all those nurse things, installing all kinds of wires
and sensors all over me. When she'd finished she told me to take it
easy, don't worry, and don't pay any attention to the things the Dr.
said to her during the operation. She said it would sound like every
thing was going wrong, but that this was just the way Dr. Mayer was
during surgery, and it was really going to turn out fine. I was to
speak when he told me to and there would be times he would ask me not
to swallow. I had no idea how hard that would be. She covered my eyes
and the rest of me except for my neck and in came the doctor.
As soon as he came in he asked the nurse "did you give her
your little talk". She said she had and then he asked me to speak
into a mini tape recorder for a few seconds. He then began to shoot me
up with a local anesthesia all around my Adam's apple and started
drawing on my throat with a felt pen.
As soon as I was good and numb he began to cut. The incision was
about two inches long, it followed a line that already existed on my
neck so it wouldn't show later. As he cut he used an electric device
to stop the bleeding. I could hear lots of sizzling and the sound of
his scalpel. I began to wish they had put me out entirely.
From the time Dr. Mayer walked into the room, It had seemed he was
in a foul mood, and though he was always polite to me , he was
incredibly rude to his nurse. This got worse and worse as we went
along. I, of course, couldn't see what was going on, but from the
sound of it he just couldn't get what he wanted from her. He'd say
"OK, pull it up this way, no that's too far, come on get it right
honey." "I can't do this if you can't do what I tell
you". "NO, that's not right I can't see". "Please
honey, this is getting all screwed up, if this doesn't work its all
your fault". "Don't be stupid, pull it over here". It
got so bad I couldn't see how she kept from punching him out right
then and there.
This all went on for about an hour. Sometimes it hurt a lot but I
didn't say anything because I didn't think I could talk. I could feel
him suturing something that was very tough in my throat. I think he
broke several needles doing it. He kept repeating "don't swallow,
don't swallow". I tried to keep from it but the urge was
incredible. Sometimes I couldn't stop and he'd say "OH SHIT,
DON'T SWALLOW", you've got to stop swallowing. As he worked, he'd
ask me to say something. I'd try to talk, some squeaky noises would
come out, and he'd put in another stitch.
Finally he said "that's as far as I can go, it sounds pretty
good". I wasn't so sure, but I was so relieved that it was over,
I didn't argue. In a few minutes I was stitched up and he was gone. It
felt like there was a huge lump in my throat when I swallowed, and it
seemed like I was going to choke, but I fought the urge because the
thought of gagging and coughing scared me to death.
The nurse got me up and cleaned me off, and back into my dress. She
took such good care of me that I started to feel a little better. She
gave me the post op instructions and I was out the door.
There I was, in downtown Beverly Hills, feeling sick, scared and
lost. Here's one point of advise, don't do anything like this alone. I
found my rental car and sat there for a while just trying to breathe
and get my head together enough to drive. I needed to eat so I stopped
in at a fast food joint for lunch, which I promptly threw up in the
parking lot. I didn't like that much, but it didn't hurt as much as I
thought it was going to. I felt a good bit better after that, and I
went back to my room to see if I could sleep.
The doctor had asked me not to turn my head side to side or tilt it
back for at least two weeks. this made driving in the big city kind of
tough. I had a lot of pills to take for pain and swelling and to
prevent infection. It figures, the antibiotic he gave me was a pill
that would choke a horse, but I managed to get them down anyway.
If you should ever get desperate enough to try this crazy
operation, there are some things you should know. The first is that no
matter what anyone tells you, it hurt. It hurt a lot for the first two
weeks, and for the next two it felt like I had a cramp in my throat.
The pain is almost gone now after six weeks, but my voice is still
hoarse most of the time. I don't think that I was one of Dr. Mayer's
big successes, they said that the goal was to give me a voice that
sounded female on the phone. I still have trouble convincing people on
the phone that my name is Sarah, but as I get back more and more
control of my voice, it's slowly getting better. At first I had almost
no dynamic range. Now I've gained back about half the range I had
originally and I feel it stretching a little every day.
The voice modification surgery, as its called, cost $4,000 not
including travel and expenses. They ask that you stay in town for at
least two days after surgery, so they can check up on you.
Looking back, though the whole ordeal was as hard as anything I've
ever done, I'm very glad I did it. The change I got wasn't all I had
hoped for, but it did help a lot. It gave me at least $10,000 worth of
confidence. I'm no longer afraid to talk and person to person I seem
to pass without question. I feel reborn and my new life feels so
right.
If you wish to get more info you can write to the doctor at:
The Beverly Hills Institute
of Aesthetic & Reconstructive Surgery
416 N. Bedford Drive
Suite 200
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
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