Voice therapy (trans)
Encyclopedia
Voice therapy or voice training refers to any non-surgical technique used to improve or modify the human voice
. Because voice is a gender cue, transsexual women frequently undertake voice therapy as a part of gender transition in order to make their voices sound female, and therefore increase their readability as females in society. Transgender
people and crossdressers
who present as women may also desire to feminize their voices and therefore undertake voice therapy.
sounding voice to a perceived female
sounding voice. The term voice feminization is used to describe what the desired outcome of surgical techniques, speech therapy, self-help programs and a general litany of other techniques to acquire a female
-sounding voice. The methods used for voice feminization vary from professional techniques used for vocal training, speech therapy by trained speech pathologists and several Pitch altering surgeries.
Vocal sound is produced by air traveling upwards from the lungs through the opening of the larynx
called the glottis
where the vocal folds vibrate and phonation or voicing occurs. The vibrating vocal folds
produce a sound that is modified by chambers (like rooms) of the throat and mouth creating resonance frequencies. The size of the chambers directly affects these frequencies. As the size of the chambers increase the deeper (or lower) the formant
frequencies become. These chambers play a very important role in the perception of the timbre
(rich, nasal, flat) of the voice. The articulators (tongue, lips, jaw, and soft palate etc.) shape the sound into recognizable speech. Then it is the prosodic features (speaking rate, inflection, pauses) which makes unique speech patterns.
There are several frequencies or harmonics produced at the lips. The fundamental frequency (F0) or the number of times per second that the vocal folds vibrate (in hertz), the conversational fundamental frequency is approximately 200 Hz for adult women and 125 Hz for adult men. Many of the voice feminization techniques, including those of surgeons, focus on the fundamental frequency but do little to address how the sound is modified by the articulators or prosodic features. Speech therapists and professional voice coaches offer training in both changing the fundamental frequency and how to change the perception of voice quality.
Voice masculinization is the opposite of voice feminization, being the change of a voice from feminine to masculine. Voice masculinization is not generally required for transsexual men as the masculinising effects of testosterone
on the larynx are usually sufficient to produce a masculine voice. However, Alexandros N.Constansis has stated that "Apart from being unfair to transmen, is also overtly simplistic" and cites Davies and Goldberg in saying that "testosterone doesn’t always drop pitch low enough for FTMs to be perceived as male".
(F0) of male voices typically ranges from 100 to 150 Hz while ranging from 170 to 220 Hz in females. In a 1988 study in which listeners identified the sex of a speaker by voice alone, all individuals identified as male had an average F0 of 160 Hz or less; all identified as female had an average F0 above 160 Hz.
Resonance
, also known as timbre
, is another important voice characteristic. According to Melanie Anne Phillips, resonance is more significant in "gendering" one's voice than pitch. One TS woman who raised her average F0 from 110 Hz to 205 Hz over four months was still frequently identified as male on the telephone, which may have been due to the resonance of her voice. However, Anne Lawrence believes that pitch is a more significant gender cue than resonance. An additional factor is the different size of the average vocal tract of males and females. What Melanie Anne Phillips calls "resonance", in terms of phonetics
is distribution of formant
frequencies which depends on vocal tract
length (VTL) – from vocal folds to lips. Men have larger skulls, also male larynx is positioned lower in relaxed state, so men have longer VTL. Shortening VTL makes voice to be perceived more feminine. It's possible to shorten VTL by will: by shifting larynx upwards and backwards by means of straining the pair of stylopharyngeus muscle
s. Straining the pair of stylohyoid muscle
s and posterior bellies of the pair of digastric muscle
s also helps. These three pairs of muscles are strained during swallowing
and gargling
, it's why Melanie Anne Phillips talks about gargling technique. Place your fingers on your throat lightly, feel where the Adam's Apple is. Swallow, feel how it goes far up, then down. Learning how to shift it upwards and backwards while talking is the key to successful voice feminization [as discussed on the voicets yahooGroup].
Like other gendered characteristics, considerable overlap exists between male and female vocal characteristics, especially the psychological ones.
Transsexual women who go through puberty
as males will usually develop voices characteristic of males. Hormone therapy does not alter a trans woman's voice once it has masculinized; therefore, trans women who intend to pass as females need to have help with vocal training to feminize their voices.
Vocal training is done formally with the help of several types of professionals and privately by the use of self-help resources including audio or video tapes programs, books, information garnered from websites or chat groups that shares this particular interest. Some trans women, such as Lynn Conway
, have feminized their voices with no assistance.
The advantage of going through a speech pathologist instead of many of the other professionals that offer training or trying to learn on your own with self-help programs is that vocal cords can easily become irritated and even develop callous-like growths called vocal fold nodule
s as the result of incorrect use of the voice and from modifying one’s voice
too quickly. Individuals who participate in a voice feminization program are trained to self-monitor and become more aware of their vocal quality. They learn to recognize where and how they produce sound, how they are resonating that sound, and how they physically carry themselves and their voice. Related aspects of communication are also addressed including: breathing patterns, gender related non-verbal communication and vocal hygiene.
Some trans women find voice training to be difficult, while others consider it unnecessary. While most trans women would prefer to have completely feminine voices, many are unable to achieve this goal. Some post-transition trans women have masculine voices, and many have peculiar female voices that may draw attention.
Voice scientists, speech pathologists, language pathologists and ENT physicians (otolaryngology
) organize voice production into five components. They are:
In training for a feminine voice, all five components are usually included.
NB: These suggestions are based on literature from language and gender scholarship such as Lakoff (1975) and the work of Deborah Tannen. However, this work has been critiqued heavily for representing only stereotypes of how women speak, rather than how women actually speak, and additionally for representing middle-class white heterosexual women to the exclusion of all others.
There was, until recently, limited evidence as to the efficacy of these surgeries in raising the fundamental frequency over the course of several years. However, since the late 1990s, surgeons performing CTA and other 'voice' procedures at Charing Cross hospital, (Hammersmith, London), have conducted long-term follow-up studies indicating "high" levels of patient satisfaction with both surgical and social health outcomes. All of these modes of 'voice surgery' may or may not have an effect on resonance or other vocal characteristics. ClaudineJ is one trans woman who reports long-term, (12 years+ at 2010), beneficial changes in both pitch, resonance and speech quality from CTA surgery. Many in the transsexual community have previously been led to regard voice surgery as 'inadvisable', while others regard a socially acceptable standard of feminine speech to be indispensable (and further surgery an acceptable risk). Anecdotal evidence
has suggested that (CTA) voice surgery can be expected to raise pitch above female norms in the immediate post-operative period (when sutures are used to create the adjusted 'approximation'); however the (more modern) use of titanium clips avoids this problem, maintaining a correct and even tension on the vocal folds, in the immediate and longer term. Of course, laryngeal surgery carries risks and some patients experience 'raspiness', or, much more rarely, complete loss of voice. Deirdre McCloskey
is one trans woman who experienced complications from voice surgery.
Voice
Voice may refer to:* Human voice* Voice control or voice activation* Writer's voice* Voice acting* Voice vote* Voice message-In film:* Voice , a 2005 South Korean film* The Voice , a 2010 Turkish horror film directed by Ümit Ünal...
. Because voice is a gender cue, transsexual women frequently undertake voice therapy as a part of gender transition in order to make their voices sound female, and therefore increase their readability as females in society. Transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
people and crossdressers
Cross-dressing
Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...
who present as women may also desire to feminize their voices and therefore undertake voice therapy.
Overview
Voice feminization is the desired goal of changing a perceived maleMale
Male refers to the biological sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilization...
sounding voice to a perceived female
Female
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...
sounding voice. The term voice feminization is used to describe what the desired outcome of surgical techniques, speech therapy, self-help programs and a general litany of other techniques to acquire a female
Female
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...
-sounding voice. The methods used for voice feminization vary from professional techniques used for vocal training, speech therapy by trained speech pathologists and several Pitch altering surgeries.
Vocal sound is produced by air traveling upwards from the lungs through the opening of the larynx
Larynx
The larynx , commonly called the voice box, is an organ in the neck of amphibians, reptiles and mammals involved in breathing, sound production, and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. It manipulates pitch and volume...
called the glottis
Glottis
The glottis is defined as the combination of the vocal folds and the space in between the folds .-Function:...
where the vocal folds vibrate and phonation or voicing occurs. The vibrating vocal folds
Vocal folds
The vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx...
produce a sound that is modified by chambers (like rooms) of the throat and mouth creating resonance frequencies. The size of the chambers directly affects these frequencies. As the size of the chambers increase the deeper (or lower) the formant
Formant
Formants are defined by Gunnar Fant as 'the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P|' of the voice. In speech science and phonetics, formant is also used to mean an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract...
frequencies become. These chambers play a very important role in the perception of the timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
(rich, nasal, flat) of the voice. The articulators (tongue, lips, jaw, and soft palate etc.) shape the sound into recognizable speech. Then it is the prosodic features (speaking rate, inflection, pauses) which makes unique speech patterns.
There are several frequencies or harmonics produced at the lips. The fundamental frequency (F0) or the number of times per second that the vocal folds vibrate (in hertz), the conversational fundamental frequency is approximately 200 Hz for adult women and 125 Hz for adult men. Many of the voice feminization techniques, including those of surgeons, focus on the fundamental frequency but do little to address how the sound is modified by the articulators or prosodic features. Speech therapists and professional voice coaches offer training in both changing the fundamental frequency and how to change the perception of voice quality.
Voice masculinization is the opposite of voice feminization, being the change of a voice from feminine to masculine. Voice masculinization is not generally required for transsexual men as the masculinising effects of testosterone
Testosterone
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group and is found in mammals, reptiles, birds, and other vertebrates. In mammals, testosterone is primarily secreted in the testes of males and the ovaries of females, although small amounts are also secreted by the adrenal glands...
on the larynx are usually sufficient to produce a masculine voice. However, Alexandros N.Constansis has stated that "Apart from being unfair to transmen, is also overtly simplistic" and cites Davies and Goldberg in saying that "testosterone doesn’t always drop pitch low enough for FTMs to be perceived as male".
Physiological
Pitch.: Females usually have higher-pitched voices than males. Many people believe that this is the only essential difference between male and female voices; however, that is not the case. The fundamental frequencyFundamental frequency
The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the fundamental and abbreviated f0, is defined as the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform. In terms of a superposition of sinusoids The fundamental frequency, often referred to simply as the fundamental and abbreviated f0, is defined as the...
(F0) of male voices typically ranges from 100 to 150 Hz while ranging from 170 to 220 Hz in females. In a 1988 study in which listeners identified the sex of a speaker by voice alone, all individuals identified as male had an average F0 of 160 Hz or less; all identified as female had an average F0 above 160 Hz.
Resonance
Acoustic resonance
Acoustic resonance is the tendency of an acoustic system to absorb more energy when it is forced or driven at a frequency that matches one of its own natural frequencies of vibration than it does at other frequencies....
, also known as timbre
Acoustic resonance
Acoustic resonance is the tendency of an acoustic system to absorb more energy when it is forced or driven at a frequency that matches one of its own natural frequencies of vibration than it does at other frequencies....
, is another important voice characteristic. According to Melanie Anne Phillips, resonance is more significant in "gendering" one's voice than pitch. One TS woman who raised her average F0 from 110 Hz to 205 Hz over four months was still frequently identified as male on the telephone, which may have been due to the resonance of her voice. However, Anne Lawrence believes that pitch is a more significant gender cue than resonance. An additional factor is the different size of the average vocal tract of males and females. What Melanie Anne Phillips calls "resonance", in terms of phonetics
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
is distribution of formant
Formant
Formants are defined by Gunnar Fant as 'the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P|' of the voice. In speech science and phonetics, formant is also used to mean an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract...
frequencies which depends on vocal tract
Vocal tract
The vocal tract is the cavity in human beings and in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered....
length (VTL) – from vocal folds to lips. Men have larger skulls, also male larynx is positioned lower in relaxed state, so men have longer VTL. Shortening VTL makes voice to be perceived more feminine. It's possible to shorten VTL by will: by shifting larynx upwards and backwards by means of straining the pair of stylopharyngeus muscle
Stylopharyngeus muscle
The stylopharyngeus is a muscle in the head that stretches between the styloid process and the pharynx.-Structure:The stylopharyngeus is a long, slender muscle, cylindrical above, flattened below...
s. Straining the pair of stylohyoid muscle
Stylohyoid muscle
The stylohyoid muscle is a slender muscle, lying anterior, and superior of the posterior belly of the digastric muscle. It shares this muscle's innervation by the facial nerve, and functions to draw the hyoid bone backwards and elevate the tongue....
s and posterior bellies of the pair of digastric muscle
Digastric muscle
The digastric muscle is a small muscle located under the jaw. so digastric muscles are muscle fibers in ligament of treitz ,omohyoid , occipitofrontalis....
s also helps. These three pairs of muscles are strained during swallowing
Swallowing
Swallowing, known scientifically as deglutition, is the process in the human or animal body that makes something pass from the mouth, to the pharynx, and into the esophagus, while shutting the epiglottis. If this fails and the object goes through the trachea, then choking or pulmonary aspiration...
and gargling
Gargling
Gargling is the act in which one bubbles a liquid in one's mouth. It usually requires that the head be tilted back, allowing a mouthful of liquid to sit in the upper throat. The head can be tilted by extending either the neck or the back, depending on what is comfortable for the gargler...
, it's why Melanie Anne Phillips talks about gargling technique. Place your fingers on your throat lightly, feel where the Adam's Apple is. Swallow, feel how it goes far up, then down. Learning how to shift it upwards and backwards while talking is the key to successful voice feminization [as discussed on the voicets yahooGroup].
Psychological
- Intonation: men tend to speak in a more monotonous tone, while women tend to use a wider range of tones when speaking.
- Pronunciation: Some theories believe that men and women tend to pronounce words differently.
- Discourse patterns: According to Melanie Anne Phillips, men tend to use words, sentence structures, and pragmatic features in which they are assertive, while women are more submissive.
Like other gendered characteristics, considerable overlap exists between male and female vocal characteristics, especially the psychological ones.
Transsexual women who go through puberty
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
as males will usually develop voices characteristic of males. Hormone therapy does not alter a trans woman's voice once it has masculinized; therefore, trans women who intend to pass as females need to have help with vocal training to feminize their voices.
Vocal training is done formally with the help of several types of professionals and privately by the use of self-help resources including audio or video tapes programs, books, information garnered from websites or chat groups that shares this particular interest. Some trans women, such as Lynn Conway
Lynn Conway
Lynn Conway is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, trans woman, and activist for the transgender community....
, have feminized their voices with no assistance.
The advantage of going through a speech pathologist instead of many of the other professionals that offer training or trying to learn on your own with self-help programs is that vocal cords can easily become irritated and even develop callous-like growths called vocal fold nodule
Vocal fold nodule
A vocal cord nodule is a mass of tissue that grows on the vocal folds . Typically, this mass will appear on the junction of the anterior and middle two-thirds of the vocal fold, where contact is most forceful....
s as the result of incorrect use of the voice and from modifying one’s voice
Human voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. Its frequency ranges from about 60 to 7000 Hz. The human voice is specifically that part of human sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary...
too quickly. Individuals who participate in a voice feminization program are trained to self-monitor and become more aware of their vocal quality. They learn to recognize where and how they produce sound, how they are resonating that sound, and how they physically carry themselves and their voice. Related aspects of communication are also addressed including: breathing patterns, gender related non-verbal communication and vocal hygiene.
Some trans women find voice training to be difficult, while others consider it unnecessary. While most trans women would prefer to have completely feminine voices, many are unable to achieve this goal. Some post-transition trans women have masculine voices, and many have peculiar female voices that may draw attention.
Voice scientists, speech pathologists, language pathologists and ENT physicians (otolaryngology
Otolaryngology
Otolaryngology or ENT is the branch of medicine and surgery that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of ear, nose, throat, and head and neck disorders....
) organize voice production into five components. They are:
- Respiration - power source
- PhonationPhonationPhonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...
- soundSoundSound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
source - Resonance - sound modifier
- Articulation - speechManner of articulationIn linguistics, manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants, even though the movement of the articulars will also greatly alter the resonant properties of the...
modifier - ProsodyProsody (linguistics)In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
- melodic aspects of speech
In training for a feminine voice, all five components are usually included.
Things that help make a voice feminine
- PitchPitch (music)Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
Feminine voices are higher; this may be the most important concern. - Pitch Range Men tend to be more monotone, varying the pitch helps feminize the voice.
- Speech Rate - Men typically speak at a steady rate, while women tend to speak in shorter bursts followed by pauses.
- Language patterns - The languageLanguageLanguage may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
that women use differs from that of men, although the degree of variation can be quite different from one language to the next (relative to English, it is extremely pronounced in JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, for instance).- Tag Questions - Example: "It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" A man, on the other hand, would be more likely to simply declare, "It is a beautiful day."
- Supportive environment - As with any skill, speaking with a feminine voice may be easier without the stress of extreme consequences for failure (for example, being identified as a transsexual by someone to whom one is not out.) Additionally, opportunities to use the feminine voice in conversational situations (as opposed to speech-therapeutic ones) may be helpful in polishing the skill.
NB: These suggestions are based on literature from language and gender scholarship such as Lakoff (1975) and the work of Deborah Tannen. However, this work has been critiqued heavily for representing only stereotypes of how women speak, rather than how women actually speak, and additionally for representing middle-class white heterosexual women to the exclusion of all others.
Vocal surgeries
While hormone replacement therapy and gender reassignment surgery can cause a more feminine outward appearance, they do little to alter the pitch or sound of the voice. The existing vocal structure can be surgically altered using procedures that include- Cricothyroid approximation (CTA) (is the most common)
- Laryngoplasty
- Thyrohyoid approximation
- Laryngeal reduction surgery (surgical shortening of the vocal cords)
- Laser assisted voice adjustment (LAVA)
There was, until recently, limited evidence as to the efficacy of these surgeries in raising the fundamental frequency over the course of several years. However, since the late 1990s, surgeons performing CTA and other 'voice' procedures at Charing Cross hospital, (Hammersmith, London), have conducted long-term follow-up studies indicating "high" levels of patient satisfaction with both surgical and social health outcomes. All of these modes of 'voice surgery' may or may not have an effect on resonance or other vocal characteristics. ClaudineJ is one trans woman who reports long-term, (12 years+ at 2010), beneficial changes in both pitch, resonance and speech quality from CTA surgery. Many in the transsexual community have previously been led to regard voice surgery as 'inadvisable', while others regard a socially acceptable standard of feminine speech to be indispensable (and further surgery an acceptable risk). Anecdotal evidence
Anecdotal evidence
The expression anecdotal evidence refers to evidence from anecdotes. Because of the small sample, there is a larger chance that it may be true but unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise unrepresentative of typical cases....
has suggested that (CTA) voice surgery can be expected to raise pitch above female norms in the immediate post-operative period (when sutures are used to create the adjusted 'approximation'); however the (more modern) use of titanium clips avoids this problem, maintaining a correct and even tension on the vocal folds, in the immediate and longer term. Of course, laryngeal surgery carries risks and some patients experience 'raspiness', or, much more rarely, complete loss of voice. Deirdre McCloskey
Deirdre McCloskey
Deirdre N. McCloskey is an American economics professor. Her job title at the University of Illinois at Chicago is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication...
is one trans woman who experienced complications from voice surgery.
See also
- List of transgender-related topics
- List of phonetics topics
- Chest register
- FalsettoFalsettoFalsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...
- Human voiceHuman voiceThe human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. Its frequency ranges from about 60 to 7000 Hz. The human voice is specifically that part of human sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary...
- Intonation (linguistics)Intonation (linguistics)In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
- Speech therapy
- Speech pathology
- Vocal fry
- Vocal foldsVocal foldsThe vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx...
- YodelingYodelingYodeling is a form of singing that involves singing an extended note which rapidly and repeatedly changes in pitch from the vocal or chest register to the falsetto/head register; making a high-low-high-low sound.The English word yodel is derived from a German word jodeln meaning "to...
Vocal techniques
- Transsexual Voice for the Tone Deaf
- TS Roadmap - Transsexual Voice Resources
- - Fundamentals of Your Feminine Voice. MP3 program by noted Speech and Language Pathologist, Kathe Perez