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How to Sing Smarter… Not Harder

Maybe this guy is back. This video talks about balancing your voice. Taking advantage of resonance, keep good airflow, and singing like you speak. It works. Try it.

Best, Singer Dude

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Voice Training Through Singing

All right, so you want to sound like the girl you are, right? Well, you already do, seeing as your voice sounds like you, and you’re a girl, but most people don’t understand that. I never could find a single, comprehensive guide for vocal feminization that included a step-by-step process (though I never paid for any of those programs either, so they may be there) but I did find some that gave me important information on certain sections and stumbled through the rest myself.

By “stumbled through” I mean that I tried to do everything at once instead of one step at a time, and took a lot longer than I should have to see any results. I also nearly caused serious damage to my voice a few times, at one point losing it entirely for a day. As I’ve thought about the different aspects of what I’ve done though, I was able to easily separate them into steps that build on each other instead of throwing everything into a blender and hoping that what comes out is what you want.

I won’t be adding any before/after clips to this, for privacy reasons as well as lack of a decent sound setup at the moment, but I have been correctly gendered every time I am on the phone or going through a drive-through for the past few months, and I’ve been doing this for about a year. Most of the things I do heavily involve matching the voice of various singers, which I can do easily thanks to nearly a decade of music training. If you have trouble with this, I would recommend using headphones to start with; they make it mucheasier to tell if you are at least harmonizing well. Eventually your ear will probably get better and you can pay more attention to your voice instead of the singer’s, at which point you can quit using the headphones if you want.

You might also end up getting really good at matching voices, and that’s not even the coolest part. Do you like singing right now, and have some male artists you like to sing along with? You won’t lose that with this! All it will do will make your range increase, and eventually raise your “normal” voice in that range. Here’s a good example of the sort of thing we’re going for (I can’t hit the highest notes yet, but I can hit most!)

Step 0. Self-care – Don’t overdo it!

Before we get started, it’s important to note that going too high before you’re ready (or warmed up), or doing too much too fast can really hurt your voice. I’m trying to get into a more responsible schedule for the last bits of mine, but I tend to do most of my training in the car, which means I end up with days at a time of not doing anything beyond using my feminine speaking voice, followed by 2-3 hours in a single day of nonstop training. Needless to say, that tends to push my voice a bit harder than I like if I’m not careful.

Most people already know what it feels like when you start to lose your voice, and definitely pay attention to those symptoms, but a new one that I noticed after starting this training caught me off guard. Often the first warning sign that I’m pushing too hard is that I start coughing and feeling like I’ve got something stuck in my throat. Nothing’s actually there, but that doesn’t change the fact that the coughing happens. Just be aware of your body, and try to stop if you notice signs of strain. After all, any voice is better than none!

If you do end up pushing things a bit, hot drinks like tea or coffee can do wonders to relax everything again. My personal treatment is freshly brewed black tea with about 2 tablespoons of honey in it. It won’t make everything magically better so you can go right back to it, but it will make it so you have a voice the next day.

Another trick to help with a strained voice, though it may bother you, is to talk as low as you can. Not deep (you don’t need to try singing bass opera parts!), but low and smooth (like you’re pretending to be a guy trying to seduce someone quietly). Do that for a few minutes and it should loosen everything up again, at least enough to get back a normal speaking pitch.

Step 1. Basic Anatomy – Your Apple is your friend

Normally this section would be a boring, basic section with odd pictures that have long names of things we don’t care about. As you’ve probably guessed, I don’t care for that approach much, and I’m also very impatient. So, here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know, and at the end you’ll be able to see just a bit of progress too!

Now I know most of us don’t like our Adam’s apples (me too!), but the technical name for what it covers is the larynx, so I’m going to call it that instead. You can feel where it is, right? Touch it, then swallow. Feel how it moved? Now try doing that without swallowing. Chances are that you can’t right now, but that’s okay! Swallow again, but this time hold your larynx at the highest point, where it feels like it pulls back slightly, then let go when you need to breathe.

Doing that exercise a few times a day will get you to the point that you can move your larynx up at will, which will help out with resonance and tone later on. You may even notice a difference if you try talking with your larynx up instead of relaxed, though it’ll probably be a bit difficult at first. This part took me about two weeks to get right, but since I haven’t met anyone who’s tried the same thing I don’t know if that’s fast or slow. If you want to, feel free to send me some feedback on how long it took you (On any of the sections, for that matter)!

Step 2. The Voice – Raise the Voice, not the Pitch

Now you can move your larynx up and down. Great! But you’re only halfway through the basics right now. Go ahead and try to keep your larynx up for the rest of the training, but if you can’t don’t worry; this part can be done without that.

I’d like to point out here that, while I was trained musically, it was notin singing (I was a tuba player), so some of the terms I’m using are probably not correct in that sense. I’m going to use them anyhow though, because it makes sense to me and I’m pretty stubborn, so just roll with it.

Sing a note in the comfortable part of your range. Doesn’t matter how loud, but hold it for a bit. Feel where the vibration is? I’m going to guess that it’s right around your collarbone, at the base of your neck. That’s called “Chest Voice,” and it’s almost always a masculine thing. This next part is kinda tricky to explain, so bear with me.

Now try to picture your voice as a light or an orb or something that’s in that area. It doesn’t matter what, so long as you do it. Raise that light/orb/whatever up slowly while you hold the tone. The sound will probably shift up as you do; that’s fine. The important thing is to note the different feeling of where the vibration is. As it reaches the halfway point in your throat you might feel a sudden change. That change over is what I call the “Throat Voice” and is probably where your voice will want to go for a while during training.

Once you get past Throat Voice and visualize the light/orb/whatever entering your mouth you’re officially using “Head Voice,” a.k.a. where most women talk from. Congrats! Now go even higher, till you have to pull your larynx back almost to where it goes when you swallow. You probably sound like a really bad Mickey Mouse or chipmunk now, but that’s normal. This is the upper range of your voice, what I call the “Falsetto.” Once you’ve got the hang of moving between these (and moving your larynx up during them as well) you can move on. I think this part took me about six weeks to really get down.

Step 3. First Steps – a.k.a. Why I do this in the car

This is where we begin the real training! Quick question: Do you like My Little Pony? If so, that makes this step a lot easier. If not, then you’ll have to use “chipmunk” songs or go look up “nightcore” on Youtube and find some songs you like. Actually, I’d do that last one anyhow, especially if you find some that the originals feature a male singer.

Either way, the point of this step is to find some songs you like that force you to use that “falsetto” range you discovered last step. At first you won’t be able to do much in that range that doesn’t sound like a squeaky wheel that somehow learned to talk, but as you keep at it you’ll start to get a little more flexibility up there. Remember though, you’re not going for a “good” sound right now; you’re trying to match the song as best you can. Read more here.