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 guage 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 Ennunciation, Grammar, Vocabulary, Use of
Pitch, Dynamic Range, and even Body English to complement vocal
patterns. To explore these refinements review my first article on
voice on the Web at http://heartcorps.com/journeys/voice.htm.
And if you feel a little more help would be useful, you can always
order my video or audio class.
I hope this helps, and wish you the very best in
all you hope to do and be.
Melanie
