#reading this on mobile and the video links seem to be broken. bruh.

[ryuuka-balaen]

@skitariiposting tagging you because it's your fault the idea got stuck in my head to make this, both because of this post and because of a conversation in the discord server you made.

(content warning for my dear friend fae who hates hearing me do this; video with deadvoice ahead.)

[edit: the video embeds closer to the end don't seem to work on the mobile app. they do work in mobile browser though, if you're willing to go to the effort of opening this post in your browser just to watch them.]

it's not exactly what I wanted and I probably should have thought a little more about how to word things beforehand but whatever I'm tired so I'm not trying a second take.

now a few comments to answer the questions i expect to get if any more than the usual 3 people see this before i get them;

those people that have told me they cant voice train have also once told me its ableism for me to say that that's not true and that they're lying to themselves. And yes, there are some people who for medical reasons may not be able to do vocal training due to problems relating to their larynx or voicebox. This is not about them! That said, being autistic does not stop you from doing vocal training. Having ADHD does not stop you from doing vocal training. Yes, it may be somewhat harder because autistic people and other neurodivergents often have difficulty managing their inflections and tone. It may be somewhat more difficult for these people as they will need to pay more attention to those things but that is not an impassible barrier.

For people that say they tried and it just didn't work; You don't know how to move the muscles you need to to be able to train your voice. That's what the exercises are for. That's the entire point! They teach you how to consciously use the muscles you use to change your voice and they strengthen those muscles so that they'll be eventually be able to stand up to constant use.

The tips i have for vocal training! first and foremost i always always always recommend people to read this guide; https://www.reddit.com/r/transvoice/comments/d3clhe/ls_voice_training_guide_level_1_for_mtf/ The first step to making your voice something you like is to understand what it's made of. There are some great exercises there to help you gain better control of the different components of your voice and from that you can start to build a voice that's yours.

aside from that i dont have any actual tips to give lol aside from explaining how i trained my voice; first by reading the guide i linked front to back multiple times to memorize it's content, then trying each of the exercises included once to get a feel for what those exercises were exercising/developing. From there I had somewhat of an idea of how to proceed and started on my actual training:

Streaming On Twitch.

that was all I did for my vocal training, and how I incentivized myself to actually do the training.

That said; I do have a couple proper tips to give, the first of which is that pitch doesnt mean shit for making your voice sound feminine. people of all genders that're into women will rave about how deep or gravelly women's voices sound "mature" and "sexy" and that's because low pitch does not read as masculine. What you should pay attention to in your voice is your resonance and your tone, which are explained in the guide I sent above. To sum up from what I remember, you do not want your voice to be resonating in your chest (a lot of people will talk about "headvoice" for getting your voice to resonate in your mouth, my resonance point is actually in my throat so you don't need to try that hard at that). For tone, it's helpful to know that a voice that fluctuates in tone more is read as more feminine, and a voice that has a more flat tone is read as more masculine.

aside from what your voice sounds like, your choice of words and how you pronounce them has a much more significant impact on how a voice is read than most people would think. a voice that speaks bluntly and emphasizes hard sounds and stops in words is read as more masculine, and a voice that uses indirect wording and sort of 'flows' words together (it's been described to me as trying to sound how cursive looks) by softening and sometimes dropping entirely hard sounds like 'g's or 't's from words will be read as more feminine.

finally; START SLOW. WORK IN SMALL INCREMENTS. it is extremely easy to overwork or pull your vocal muscles and permanently damage your voice. if you ever feel fatigue or pain in your neck/throat while vocal training, the time to stop has already passed, and you need to give your body a couple days to recover. I don't like to share my old twitch channel, but I want to for this post as I feel they're a good way to help me explain. So, as an example of where to start, here's one of my first clips from when I started streaming;

The only efforts I was putting into my voice at this time was one, doing a "customer service voice" that one might do when working a customer service position or otherwise pretending to like someone you're talking to by speaking in an overly friendly tone and lifting your voice a little. And two, I was lifting the resonance point of my voice so it didn't rumble in my chest and instead felt closer to my neck.

That was from Sept.1, and the first clip I was able to find where I feel my voice started sounding more feminine was from Dec.8, so just a little over three months later;

I'm not putting these here as a way to say "it should take you about three months to get to the point you can use a feminine voice," my intent is actually the opposite. because, again, I was speaking for five hours a day every day to gradually work myself up to this point and that's very much not something that most people have the time and space available to do.

The last thing I have to say, I think, is that when people have asked before what exercises I did to train my voice, the answer I've given is "Screaming". and, uh. I don't think that that alone gives a good idea of what I mean, so here. have three examples of Screaming.

looking for those I've realized that I didnt start doing the screaming noises really til after I'd settled into a half-decent feminine voice but I do stand by that that and making strange noises was extremely beneficial in my learning to better control my voice and really settle into a voice that I enjoy and am comfortable in.