Lately, I’ve been watching my voice patterns on a program called Dr. Speech. I learned about it at a workshop with Shelagh Davies called ‘Changing Keys’ for voice feminization. It’s nice to learn actual techniques from a speech pathologist rather than bumble beeing my way along.
I think the most valuable thing I learned it that you have to practice practice practice… and find someone to practice with – to speak to in your target voice. Talking slightly higher and staying on that tone is good, try to trail up at the end of the sentence because we tend to trail down and land in man voice pitch, which is readsville. If you trail up a bit toward the end, then the natural trail down that happens will land in feminized territory. Listen to how women talk, maybe on you tube and mimic them, speak they way they do and learn inflections.
F# as a target pitch is a good place to start – if you have access to a guitar – it’s the note at the 4th fret up on the D string (the third string in from the thicker string side). I’m using G as a target pitch, but that’s just what’s comfortable for me. Keep your voice producing easy relaxed smooth sounds, don’t try to push anything. Try to feel buzzing in and around your lips and face in that general area – try to make sounds in your mouth that you can feel buzz in your face. Try positioning your tongue touching your bottom teeth. Make sounds going from low into falsetto that sound like scary halloween sounds. Use different phonetic sounds when you do that like ee oo ahh mm mmoo etc. Start at the target pitch say F# and draw the tone out for a few seconds then say a few words in a normal voice at that tone. Like mmm – my day was excellent! Remember to go up at the end of the sentence so when your voice goes down in will be near your target pitch rather than in deeper territory. The average woman’s voice never goes below C (the C just below the F# target pitch I talked about) You can find that note by going to the third fret on the second low string of the guitar.
Anyway, that’s just a few tips. I’m still working day by day to improve. If you wanna chat about it, contact me and I’m also open to the idea of chatting with someone on skype for practice.
Meanwhile back at the writer’s ranch:
I am prone to be apophenic, dissociated and other lovely impossibly difficult things in terms of relating, and I also carry that over into my writing purposely. I am taking a creative non fiction course this month and writing a lot of post mod, post apoco, dissociated style stuff – and it kindof spills over into the regular world. (wrote 4000 words yest in three hours).
No comments:
Post a Comment