Transgender voice training unites the soul and sound
i would like to share with you the story
of one of my clients
a woman named heather heather first
reached out to me
last fall because her voice was making
her miserable
she told me during our first session
together she said i hate my voice
it makes me feel like giving up
to her whenever she spoke and had to use
her voice
she never heard herself she always heard
a stranger’s voice
this negative relationship with her
voice was impacting her professional
life
and her personal life as a high school
teacher
heather was required to use her voice
for hours a day
and using her voice for so long every
single work day was just
wearing her down she also found herself
going out with friends less
and going on less dates and in general
trying to avoid speaking in public as
much as possible to preserve her mental
health
and her physical safety as a transgender
woman
heather felt like she was always being
examined under a microscope scrutinized
for any sign of vulnerability based on
her previous experiences
she knew that if she spoke and the wrong
person overheard her
at a bar or in a bathroom she was
opening herself up to harassment
even verbal or physical assault
ultimately one day heather had a choice
to make
she could continue living with this
discomfort and this fear
or she could try and take action and
gain control over her voice
and find a different part of her voice
that she felt represented her
better thankfully heather chose the
latter option
and that’s how she found me as a
speech-language pathologist who
specializes in the assessment and
treatment
of voice disorders as well as
transgender vocal training
i’ve worked with a number of clients who
have been where heather was that day
it never gets easier to hear people say
such negative
visceral things about themselves and
when it comes from a member of the trans
community
it particularly strikes home for me as a
member of the community myself
i’ve heard countless friends and
siblings
echo these feelings of hopelessness and
negative self-talk
now personally speaking i have a
fantastic relationship with my voice
through my background as a voice actor
singer and performer
i’ve gained a great deal of vocal
flexibility and so i can make my voice
do
whatever i need to in order to feel
satisfied with it
and thanks to my degree in
speech-language pathology i had the
theoretical
knowledge and the underlying framework
of how to help other people
achieve similar levels of flexibility
and comfort with their own voices
i found myself in a unique position to
help
my community where i felt that they were
currently being underserved
most people when they produce their
voices they don’t think about
exactly how it works i feel like unless
your voice revolves around
unless your work revolves around the
voice like mind does
and what most people don’t realize is
that their voice
is actually the combination of the
interplay of several different systems
in the body and by changing one or more
of these aspects
we can change the voice that we produce
we
can come up with all sorts of different
uh what i refer to as different mixes of
the voice
and these different mixes can
communicate different things about us
now the audio that you’re about to hear
is the combination of two different
mixes of heather’s voice
the first mix was recorded during our
very first session together before we
started working together
so we could establish a baseline of
where heather’s voice was coming from
the second recording was recorded on our
very last day together
before we said our final goodbyes let’s
go ahead and listen to that
i’m keeping a running list of facts
findings and feelings that i’ve come
across in my transition
after six months i started feeling a
little better about this whole thing and
gained a little perspective on the
process
here are the things so far i wish i
could share with myself of the not too
distant past
i know a lot of this is subjective and
personal experience but i’m hoping maybe
this can help others just starting out
please add to this list in the comments
if you’ve got anything
the difference between these two mixes
of heather’s voice
is as plain as night and day beyond the
more directly observable and measurable
differences such as her
increase in pitch the biggest difference
that i hear
is the happiness in heather’s voice in
that first mix
we can hear just how heavily heather’s
voice is weighing on her
it sounds like she’s almost slogging
through the mud just to get through this
paragraph to read and in that second mix
all of that heaviness is
gone her voice sounds unencumbered it
sounds free
we had successfully aligned heather’s
sound with her
soul but how did heather
get to that last recording from the
first what exactly does transgender
vocal training
look like well the process can be very
different from client to client but
ultimately we are looking at
accomplishing three main things
one increase the client’s vocal
flexibility and their stamina
two find a mix of their voice that they
prefer to their default voice
that they feel like represents them
better and three
instilling that new mix into their
muscle memory so that by the time
they’re using this voice in conversation
they barely even have to think about
their voice at all
when heather and i first began working
together she had a lot of walls built up
around her voice as unhappy as her voice
made her it was still somewhat of a safe
harbor for her
and moving outside of that known area of
her voice to
something she did know uncharted waters
required a tremendous act of
bravery and courage on her part it was
something that we needed to work
up to something that i needed to earn
from her
and so to begin getting her body in
motion we started with some very basic
breathing exercises
and i would like everyone watching this
video to join along with these breathing
exercises
if you’re open to it if you don’t that’s
fine i won’t catch you
go ahead and take in a nice big inhale
in through your nose
down into your belly and then out
through your mouth inhale
and exhale that feels so good we’re
gonna do another one real quick inhale
and exhale that was more for my
nervousness than for y’all but hopefully
you found some good out of it
so if we are taking these nice deep
breaths
we are slowing down our heart rate we
are providing our brains with more
oxygen and this can help decrease the
anxiety and the
fear that we can feel and if we are
taking these nice deep breaths
it’s really not asking too much to add
just a gentle side to that exhale so go
ahead and try that out
take in a nice deep breath
and then let out a sigh
the voice that we hear is the result of
a small apparatus in our throat
of larynx there are two folds of muscle
in the larynx that are brought together
when we want to produce our voice
as air comes up from underneath these
sheets of muscle are pushed apart
and then they are sucked back together
again and pushed apart and sucked back
together
in this sort of oscillating motion here
and as air passes through those
oscillators
the air is set into motion it starts to
vibrate
and that is what we perceive as pitch
the faster the vibrations the higher the
pitch that we hear
and the slower the vibrations the lower
the pitch that we hear
so we are producing our voice we are
exhaling from the lungs that air is
being set into vibrations
in the larynx before it travels out into
the environment and into our ears it
passes through our resonating cavities
our oral cavity
and our nasal cavity and based on the
size and shape of those cavities
certain parts of that sound signal are
amplified other parts are reduced
and that’s what results in each person’s
unique
texture of their voice everyone’s oral
cavity and nasal cavity
is unique and that’s how we can tell one
person’s voice
from another you can think about these
differences
in the size and shape of these
resonating chambers as the difference
between a violin
and a cello now the violin in cello
they’re relatively the same
shape but because of the drastic
difference in size
of these instruments the quality the
timbre
the resonance of the sound produced is
drastically different
the sound produced by the cello because
of this large resonating cavity is warm
and rich
you can almost physically feel it more
than you can hear it
inversely for the violin the resulting
sound is bright
it is piercing it soars over the rest of
the orchestra
and we can achieve similar qualities in
our own voices by
modifying the size and shape of our
mouths
so we can look at if we want to achieve
darker
richer qualities in our voice we can
increase the size of our mouths
and this results in that darker richer
mix of our voice
if we want to look at lightening up the
voice we can decrease the size of the
oral cavity
and this results in some of these
brighter thinner qualities i referred to
somewhat similar to the violin
so through transgender vocal training we
look at modifying these three different
aspects of voicing
breath flow pitch and resonance
we look at modifying them discreetly in
structured
therapeutic tasks but we can also make
broad
sweeping changes through more general
vocal play
and vocal play is one of the my favorite
things about this work
possibly because of my voice acting
background but also
it’s incredibly helpful for clients
because it is the goal is less to find
their perfect ideal voice that
represents them
and it’s more about just playing around
with these silly different characters
and we can often access some of these
qualities that we’re looking to play
around with in our voices a little bit
easier through this more
general play so some examples if we’re
looking to
access some of that darker richer
resonance we may look at adapting the
voice of an
opera singer or a giant right v5
and that often helps people just
instinctively tap into those darker
richer qualities
inversely if we’re looking to play
around with some bright resonance we may
look at like a cheerleader character or
like a valley girl-ish character
and oftentimes when you tell people what
does a cheerleader sound like or what is
your mental image of a cheerleader
they often go for this brighter thinner
resonance just right off the bat
and that’s just one method of voice
exploration that we use
depending on a client’s individual
background with their voice and their
goals
we may look at a variety of different
techniques we may look at
incorporating some singing techniques if
they have that background or if they’re
interested in gaining that skill set
we may look at employing some imagery
and metaphor
to help these clients describe how these
different voices
sound and feel to them as they produce
them we may even use some more
traditional
vocal rehabilitation methods and
strengthen some muscles
so that it’s easier for them to access
these different parts of their voice
without as much strain or tension
no matter the methods involved when
we’re first starting off we start on a
very simple
level of voice production it’s one thing
to toss
a client a paragraph of romeo and juliet
and say all right go ahead and read this
and let’s go ahead and play around with
your voice that could be very
intimidating for some people
and so we look at starting on a much
smaller scale playing around with
individual vowel sounds
so for example if we’re looking to uh
modify the ooh vowel if we want to keep
pitch the same but modify resonance that
might sound like
once a client feels comfortable with
that much simpler level of voice
production
we can increase the complexity we might
put that vowel into a single syllable
word context
so again if we’re talking about that ooh
vowel
the word might be mood so mood
mood mood mood mood
mood and once they feel comfortable
there we may move up to multi-syllabic
words
once they’re comfortable there we move
up to three to four word
short phrases and the reason that we
structure it this way is that by the
time they’re using their voice in
conversation
their muscles are so used to this action
that it’s a lot easier to produce with a
lot less
thought
so that’s how we address the mechanical
aspects of this work
however there’s another piece that we’ve
barely touched on
that is integral to a client making
progress and being happy with the end
result
and that is how we help a client figure
out
what sound aligns with their sense of
self
the best this can be a tricky thing
for a number of reasons the main of
which the main reason being
that when they first come to me the
client may not
fully know themselves at that point and
as they
move further in their transition and
learn more about themselves and they’re
exposed to new things
what they want to communicate about
themselves may
change another speed bump that we can
encounter is that oftentimes clients put
way too much power and responsibility in
my hands
they maybe even subconsciously expect
that i will tell
them how to sound female
which is understandable i mean i am the
voice professional in the relationship
but it completely overlooks just how
important that client’s feedback is to
this entire process
because ultimately i’m not going to be
hearing their voice for the rest of my
life
they are and so ultimately their
happiness their satisfaction with the
sound
matters way more than my professional
opinion about what sounds good or what
sounds like the voice that they should
produce
and so we try and counteract this by
addressing these concerns
upfront we discuss expectations from
both the client and myself
about what’s going to happen during this
process
so from the very beginning we make sure
that the client understands that this
is a partnership between us it’s going
to take just as much
commitment from them and exploration on
their own time
as it will take from me during our
weekly sessions
and so daily practice is another huge
critical component of this piece
they need to take home what we discussed
during our sessions
and practice practice practice try out a
bunch of different mixes of their voice
and hopefully come back to our next
session having made a ton of progress on
their own
now heather was a model client in this
regard
whenever she would come in for a session
she would
be all excited and share some anecdotes
about the the positive experiences that
she had with her voice from the previous
round of independent practice
as well as a couple areas where she felt
a little bit less successful
and that was perfect that was fantastic
because then we knew exactly what to
focus on during our sessions together
i think the biggest breakthrough for
heather came when she first
heard her laugh i think the biggest
breakthrough for heather came when she
first
heard herself laugh in her authentic
voice for the first time
i could still clearly picture her facial
expression as she looked at me with
tears bribing in her eyes and she said
that’s me
that’s my voice and from that first
moment of gender euphoria that eureka
moment
she was unstoppable heather took our
work and she ran with it
she started using her voice in as many
contexts as she felt comfortable she
started practicing around her
friends her family members trusted
allies at her workplace
and when she started using her voice
more socially in these
safe environments she started to branch
out her usage of that to
every aspect of her life she started
talking to strangers with it and
completing calls with it
and ultimately at that point she really
didn’t need to concentrate on her voice
at all because it was so set
into her muscle memory and because she
wanted to use it because it made her so
happy so if you at home are watching
this video and any part of heather’s
story is resonating with you
i would highly encourage you to reach
out to a voice professional
because you shouldn’t have to live with
that discomfort be like heather
and take charge thank you so much