james

I’m a professional singer and singing teacher – staying off T for the sake of my voice (classical music) but I’ve started working with guys negotiating the changes T is making – Just put up the first two videos of the project – hope they might prove helpful.

http://cnlester.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/singing-and-vocal-production-for-trans-guys/

Before Testosterone, I often sang with the radio and for fun… but I always sang in my “chest voice,” which was a “contralto” range — only a smidge higher than the typical Tenor I range. I could sing many (if not most) of the men’s songs on the radio in the same octave the guys were singing in.

When I joined the women’s chorus (as a credit for my music major in college) I was disappointed to find that women in choirs are typically expected to sing in their “head voice” so when I did that I sang Soprano II. It was a good but strange and somewhat uncomfortable experience singing with the women, because at that point in my life I didn’t know I wanted to transition, but I was keenly aware of not being a woman… and while I appreciated my ability to contribute my voice to the beautiful music of the chorus, I never would have felt comfortable singing in my head voice in a more solo fashion. It always felt like my voice was supposed to be lower, which is why I always sang in my chest voice, singing tenor parts.

I started Testosterone at 200mg/biweekly for the first six months and then changed to 100mg/week. I don’t recall any drastic “DROPS” in my voice… it just seemed to gradually slip lower over the first several months. At three months on T the change in my voice was partly lower in speech, but more so in timbre — it was rough, husky. By the end of 6 months it had mostly finished dropping, with the following several months having my voice mature in timbre and gaining a couple of notes on the bottom. I have a small adam’s apple now that I didn’t have before T.

I sang in the men’s chorus at my university after eight months on T. That semester I sang Baritone (/Bass I), and sometimes the higher notes of that range were hard for me. Then there was the summer break and the following two long semesters I sang Bass II – which is the lowest common voice part. As far as I know, the directors of the men’s chorus never knew I was trans. I got a kick out of the fact that as a transguy I could hit lower notes than 3/4 of the guys in the chorus… but I’m also not surprised that my voice is a bass now — it started out a little low before T and both my dad and my brother sing bass.

However, my speaking voice wouldn’t lead you to believe that I sing bass. It’s not high, but it’s not particularly low either. I have a hint of what I call “tranny voice,” but I also suspect my voice hasn’t finished maturing at two and half years on T now. I suspect that over the next several years my voice will mature not in deepness but in timbre in the same way that a teenage boy’s voice matures into a man’s voice as he grows older.

After spending time around lots of transmen, I’ve noticed what I just called “tranny voice” – it’s generally not something that would out a transguy to your average Joe, but I’ve noticed that there’s a certain timbre in the speaking voice that’s common among transguys but not common among cismen. I don’t have a good way to describe it, except that maybe it’s a little more “airy” or “pinched” than most men’s voices. It leads me to believe that there is in fact something slightly different going on in the biology of voice changes in transmen.