Hiya, I hope everyone is having a comfy weekend (:
Today I’d love to read people’s perspective on their vocal training. I’m barely a day in, finding numerous exercises and opinions and coaches from various backgrounds. And of course practicing for myself.
My question right now is per the title, how important are the technical aspects of finding the right voice, versus simply practicing and re-training your vocal muscles? My femme voice is too breathy and it sounds forced and I have to stop myself elongating words to hold the higher pitch.
I’m wondering how you find the difference between actually doing something wrong (or falling in to beginner’s traps), and just needing to speak that way more frequently and for longer periods.
I’d really appreciate any tips, on this or in general, or even questions from other people! As I don’t see a vocal related thread posted here recently.
I don’t know if this is the best way to do it, but when I started my pitch range was terrible so I decided to talk all the time in highest pitch voice I could comfortably do and it really wasn’t that much higher. I’ve been doing it for about a week and I can now go a lot higher than I used to. I’ve also noticed that while doing this my resonance moved up even though I wasn’t trying to, I’m thinking maybe I did it subconsciously or something. My voice still sounds masc though, but it is a lot closer to a femme voice than it used to be.
I think what has worked best for me was getting to know some of the things to do that makes the voice more feminine, and then spend a lot of time doing the things while recording myself so I can immediately hear if I did it right and what happens if I combine them.
It kinda sucks that it requires actually listening to the voice tho 🥲
I’m basically in the same boat, so take my input with a grain of salt. That said, from what I’ve read, it’s important to avoid, or at least be careful with, guides that focus on muscle training. There are exercises out there that can apparently be harmful and cause injury. When I get started in earnest, I’m planning to begin with TransVoiceLessons on YouTube. The girl in those videos frequently makes the point that nothing in voice training should be painful or cause strain, which sounds sensible and encouraging to me. Of course, there will be muscle memory training - it’s muscle strength training that can be problematic.
That might be off topic to your actual question, but I wanted to throw it out there just in case.
I’ve done voice training for the last 6 years on and off. Consistency is really hard to manage. I find myself very often falling back into… masculine voice? I don’t really know what to refer to it as lol. I work over the phone, and people really give you a hard time if your voice sounds off or weird to them. My struggle is finding a consistent configuration of vocal muscles that reliably produces an acceptable outcome. I’m personally going to be pursuing surgical options in the near future.
If you can see an actual trained vocal therapist, they can help a lot. They can give you on the fly specific feedback and may be covered by your insurance. They can also tailor advice specifically to you and guide you in making changes. I had my best results in vocal therapy. As in the case with my job, keep in mind how you use your voice. Like the different circumstances in which you regularly use it, the different tones you regularly use it in, and try and develop a habit of manually adjusting your muscles. You’ll unconsciously relax them when you’re not speaking. Helps to have some kind of reminder to adjust them again. Like before I answer the phone at work, I take a moment to adjust my vocal weight and practice my opening just so I can adjust a bit before speaking with someone.
Practice and experimentation are key. You have to get familiar with manipulating the different muscles of the throat, mouth, and larynx. Give yourself time and don’t be discouraged if things aren’t perfect the first time.
I’ve started recently too, something I took to heart was one of Vee’s videos on goals and timescales, she said for basically the first month your goal should just be to play around with your voice, go high, go low, sing in a higher pitch than usual, just have fun with it. I’ve been doing that and I’ve noticed it’s easier for me to maintain that higher pitch now