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Level 2 - Intermediate

4. Resonance

Once you are comfortable with manipulating your larynx and your pitch, and you'd like an additional challenge, you can try doing them at the same time. That means, while you are trying to talk in the female range, you also raise your larynx to reduce your vocal tract length. Start by following along with the exercises in video 1.

Video 1

It will probably sound pretty bad at first, but that's fine! Your goal at this stage is not to sound feminine, but to keep your pitch between F3 and F4 (with Vocal Pitch Monitor) and keep your larynx raised while talking (which you can feel by holding a finger lightly to your throat).

Your voice should sound more buzzy and brassy, which you'd call a bright resonance (or bright timbre), as opposed to the dark, hollow resonance of more masculine voices - and that's a good thing! Watch video 2 to hear a great demonstration of this effect - you want your voice to be in the upper-right quadrant of the diagram.

Video 2

Then, on top of that, you want to learn to arch your tongue up and push it forward to reduce the amount of space in your mouth where sound can resonate. To get the feeling, whisper "kee" (as in "key") and keep pushing the middle of your tongue up high for the "ee" - just below where it touches the roof of your mouth to make the "k" sound. Say it a few times, while keeping your tongue clenched, pushing it a little higher each time. This is the smallest space you can make inside your mouth, the bright extreme of your oral resonance, opposite a yawn.

That's great for saying an "ee" sound, but when feminizing the other vowels, your tongue will be lower than it is for the "ee" but still higher and more forward than it would be in your masculine voice. And you still want to feel a bit of tension in your tongue, that clench, throughout. Essentially, you want to talk with a small space at the front of your mouth. That makes it sound like you have a smaller mouth than you actually do, which makes you sound more feminine.

Gaining mastery over your tongue is one of the trickiest skills of voice feminization, but it's arguably one of the most important. Get started on it by practicing the exercises in video 3. Then watch video 4 and try some sirens and trills across your range while raising your larynx and tongue.

Video 3

Video 4

Your homework is to take your daily speaking practice, where you try to keep your pitch between F3 and F4, and spend at least half that time talking with your larynx raised as well, for a bright, buzzy sound. Then, as best you can, try to add in the tongue clench too, pushing it up and forward to brighten the sound even more. See how it sounds with your larynx raised or lowered, your tongue arched or relaxed, and your pitch high or low, as well as in a whisper.

This is likely to cause a lot of tension in the muscles of your neck and throat at first, so do trills and yawn every so often to help them relax again. You can even try lying on your back while practicing, to force your body to relax. And of course, sip water throughout your practice session and take a break when your voice gets too tired or hoarse.

Also, keep practicing your whisper sirens multiple times a day, but add a whispered "kee" at the end of each one to bring your tongue up. This will allow you to go even higher with the siren and make a really tiny dog sound! Again, hold those muscles in place at the top and really clench your tongue. At the same time, try to relax as much tension as you can in your jaw and neck while still holding the same shape.

5. Open Quotient

Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief, because it's time for something a little easier!

Feminine voices generally sound softer and more breathy than masculine voices. Marilyn Monroe is an iconic example of this, as you can hear in video 1.

Video 1

When you try to speak in the upper range of your modal register without going into a falsetto, the natural tendency is to strain to reach those higher notes, which makes your voice sound harder, not softer, and not particularly feminine. This is because you put a lot of compression on your vocal folds (vocal cords), squeezing them together more tightly. You want to learn to use less compression for a softer sound, where your vocal folds stay open more (open quotient) while vibrating. With high compression (closed quotient), adding breathiness will just result in a strained sound like Ash Ketchum from Pokemon, as in video 2.

Video 2

To learn to control the compression in your voice, start by watching video 3 and trying the "ah-ha" exercise and the vowel slides. Then download the Android app Spectroid (or Spectrogram Pro on iOS), and in the audio settings, change the Desired transform interval to 10 ms (100 Hz) and check the box to Stay awake in the display settings.

Video 3

With the app running, start by saying "ahh" for a few seconds in your normal speaking voice. In the scrolling display, you should see a bunch of bright yellow lines showing up against the purple and pink background noise. Then whisper "ahh" for a few seconds, just with your breath. You should see some faint pink smudges, but no yellow lines. Now, heave a big, breathy sigh while saying "ahh..." in a soft, relaxed voice. Ideally, you will see faint yellow lines melding into a background of pink smudges. This is what it looks like when your voice has a high open quotient. It's somewhere in between a normal voice and a whisper.

Your homework is to spend a few minutes before your other voice exercises, to slide between a whisper and your normal speaking voice. It's a good warmup! You can start with one long, whispered "ahh" that you gradually turn into a spoken "ahh" and then back to a whisper, just by changing the compression. Do this with the Spectroid app running, so you can see the change as well as hear it. For a bit more of a challenge, try smoothly changing from a whisper, to a soft voice, to a normal voice while speaking or reading out loud.

Of course, you can also play with this during your daily speaking practice. See if you can make your voice a little softer, or really breathy, or changing from one extreme to another while still maintaining the feminine aspects of pitch and resonance that you've been working on.

6. Intonation

All right. It's time to start imitating some voices!

Intonation is the rise and fall of pitch as you speak. Masculine voices tend to be very monotone, where the pitch changes very slightly and infrequently from word to word, and important words are spoken louder for emphasis. Feminine voices tend to vary a lot in pitch, across a wider range, and big pitch changes are used to draw attention to the important words. Oftentimes, every word is spoken at a different pitch than the one before, and sometimes the pitch will change multiple times within a single word!

The clearest example of this can be found in that great figurehead of exaggerated femininity, the Disney princess. Watch video 1 for a virtuosic vocal tour through a diversity of Disney princess voices, and try closing your eyes and listening to the rise and fall of pitch in each one. You can even pull out your Vocal Pitch Monitor app and watch the pitch rise and fall on the screen!

Video 1

Your homework is to spend some time every day trying to talk like a Disney princess, in addition to all your other exercises. Listen to clip 1 with Vocal Pitch Monitor open, watching the pitch rise and fall, and pause every sentence to try parroting back what you just heard, with the same rise and fall in your pitch. Don't worry about sounding good, and don't worry about your larynx or resonance either. Just focus on the pitch, and go ahead and use your falsetto to go high if you can. It will sound fake and silly, and that's okay - enjoy it!

Clip 1

PrincessVoiceOver ยท Who is the PRINCESS Bella?

The only thing that you should try to do, other than match the pitch, is to smile while you speak, stretching your lips across your teeth, and make your mouth opening a little smaller, like you're saying "ooh" (just pretend you're a dainty princess). This will also brighten your resonance a tiny bit, and make your voice sound that much more feminine. Use this for your princess voice practice, but also for your resonance practice as well, tightening your lips in addition to raising your larynx and tongue.

If you get bored of using that clip or just want to find something in your own accent, feel free to practice with other example voices, like in video 2. Or make up your own princess voice if you can - the sillier the better. Delight in the ridiculousness of it all, and just have fun with it!

Video 2