Lo-fi. - r/transvoice

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i tried to to do this but my falsetto is so unreliable and unpredictable. and it gets even worse with more tries. do you think i got permanent vocal damage from doing too much incorrect voice feminization?

https://voca.ro/1lQZMvbpVkRe

https://voca.ro/19zcEWBnigHl

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u/amethyst-gill 1d ago

Seems you have the notes by some clear metric.

My advice: be easy with it, trust it, go for it… and know that your body, voice included, by virtue of being living flesh is actually remarkably adaptive and resilient.

Good luck to you. This can be a plenty long road. But life is even longer. I am just about ten years in at this point. I also started rather young; I’m 29 currently.

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u/Similar_End_1545 1d ago edited 1d ago

i'm not young i'm like 10 years older than you. but i have done diy vocal feminization for many years. last year i got issues and i was afraid that i would lose my voice or it will permanently deepen. and started to dig into the subject. i was like musically illiterate and ignorant about how voice works. when i went to this group i was thinking i was able to help others but it turned out i was the one doing it wrong and i'm just lucky with my relatively high pitched voice and the fact that i'm still able to speak.
maybe i just have vocal fatigue right now. but it's another issue. my voice gets fatigued too easily. did you have similar issues before?

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u/amethyst-gill 1d ago

Well I’ll admit that long before I even recognized voice feminization as something achievable or even conceivable as a pursuit, I had studied the acoustics of sound, from a raw clinical standpoint but also a more artisanal, musical standpoint as well. This was while I was still a teenager, in high school even. And by and large this was something I did almost entirely on my own, internet indelibly at my fingertips, and taking notes constantly as well — whether mentally, practically, or in writing. So I had an unusually wide grasp & understanding of sound long before I was even set on doing what I needed to do as far as being & becoming a woman. This made things having to do with reshaping and recalibrating my voice to restore it to feminine from extremely masculine (bass-baritone, see previous post) at least that much more tangible and projectable.

And yes, my youth almost certainly aided this. I was nineteen when I took my first pill of estradiol, eighteen when I went to my first HRT consultation, seventeen when I first saw a gender therapist, and sixteen when I first met with a local support group about trans matters. (I lament that many such things are likely just harder to seek out or even rely on now for those presently under twenty.) My voice was quite manifestly developed by the time I transitioned; it definitively dropped twice, around age fifteen and age eighteen. The situation would have certainly worsened if I waited longer — and it would have become that much more calcified, as I put it. Your voice is likely not nearly as deep as mine was, but even then, being in your late thirties it will be not unfeasible but that much more a challenge against the habituations of your body as it’s been, and what it’s used to maneuvering and in what manner, than it even would be for me to start such changes at my age now, let alone at nineteen or twenty. But while I recognize the graveness of that, and may caution against seeking certain high levels of mastery before getting other things steady and doing the best you can first and foremost, I don’t doubt for a second that you can play catchup and make the most of it.

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u/Similar_End_1545 23h ago edited 23h ago

what "high levels of mastery"??? i just try to make any head voice sound and i can't right now. when i can and then i feel i can have even a 4.5 octave range and then suddenly i lose half next day. and you know how to train it if it gets ruined again and have to re-learn again?
do i do something wrong? will it improve or will it be even worse? i definitely don't want to lose my speaking voice. if it's harder then i will do harder. or do you think i'm doomed? English is not my first language. it looks so complex and euphemistic you know. i have already asked chatgpt about these stuff a lot, but i rarely get feedback from real people.

i guess it's fatigue but why? and what to do against it?

https://voca.ro/1iTyvcGGX5CJ

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u/amethyst-gill 23h ago

Like I said, it will warrant you best to rest in and with your voice more. Womanhood after all is far less about extremity.

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u/Similar_End_1545 22h ago

i got so obsessed.
https://voca.ro/1c3SN3mSH6wP

https://voca.ro/12RnEXGHuuhq
ok i did the 4.5 octaves for today i can stop. but im still hoping i will be able to do it to the tune.

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u/Lidia_M 22h ago

Those squaks is you trying to get into the whistle mode/register - it's when the folds are so stretched that they lose elasticity and produce a simple sound, a bit like when you let air from a balloon while stretching the outlet. Not very useful for singing.

In general, those higher notes (high soprano, something useful for singing, not whistle) are all about anatomical luck and then finesse/technique to take advantage of it, not brute force, so my advice would be not to be tempted to push it (indeed you can cause vocal damage if you do.)

Maybe spend time on smart/gentle probing and exploration first and absolute fundamentals, like understanding and navigating your vocal break, mastering efficiency/adduction, ear training for different qualities of sound that matter.

If not seen yet, scan for clips with "connected/disconnected," "adducted/abducted," "yodel," "falsetto," "register" in their titles on Selene's archive page.

As to whether you are doomed or not - how do you want people to know that? Some people are some not, but it required a long process of discovery to find out for oneself (years and years.) The only way to find out is to be willing to risk that process.

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u/Similar_End_1545 22h ago

what? whistle? i was thinking i was doing mixed voice at first and then trying to do head voice. and whistle is higher like upper 6th octave and above

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u/Lidia_M 22h ago

That's what you do in the clip above, at the end - that's the whistle register, yes. and yes, those squeaks are above C6. It's not what you want to focus on and it's about as far from mixing as it gets.

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u/Similar_End_1545 22h ago

oh i was thinking that my head voice came back. but then not. maybe some there is some swelling that prevents M2 phonation. it happens so often.
ok i know that you complained about your voice a lot too and you have probably much worse issues. that's why i asked her because she can do the high notes clearly better than me even though she has a lower modal voice type.

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u/Similar_End_1545 21h ago

so if it doesn't come easily then try the next day again? i can't post evidence right now, but sometimes it does come easily

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u/Lidia_M 17h ago

Yes, in general brute forcing it tends to be both risky and not really a point because the ideal outcomes are about the reverse: not needing some extra big muscular forces.

In the end you are controlling delicate, sub-inch in length, vocal folds that "flap in the breeze" so to speak, during phonation: you either figure out how to do it in a delicate way or they won't cooperate.

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u/Excellent_Sherbet794 15h ago

Makes me think of Yma Sumac!

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u/amethyst-gill 14h ago

Aww yay tysm. 🥰 [All of these faculties, and yet I am destitute!! I really wish I was kidding!] https://youtube.com/shorts/F_0TIhXbw4c?is=bzK-kU5Os_YGBYFC

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u/amethyst-gill 14h ago

The song in full is pretty much in this performance as well (after the recitation at the beginning). https://youtu.be/WNdDS5G2kMQ?is=ZErHMUfQN3aGq-GM

Audio/Video Lo-fi.

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