So I've been working on feminizing my voice for about two-and-a-half years now and it's still something I regularly improve and iterate on (for a few minutes each day). I thought I'd occasionally share some of my vocal studies and my commentary about how I think about feminizing my voice.
My voice actually varies a lot depending on the day or situation and I still haven't really settled into a consistent voice; it's probably more accurate to say that I have a "suite" of related voices that I switch between as I slowly converge on a voice that is a good mix between (A) comfortable, (B) feminine, (C) natural-sounding, and (D) aesthetically pleasing to me. Also, even when I finally converge on a voice that I'm satisfied with I'll probably still have a suite of situational voices, but perhaps not as varied as my current mix of voices (which are kind of all over the place).
Recently I've been working on improving the quality of my voice's resonance (the main thing that feminizes the voice1). A second thing I'm also working on is improving airflow while preserving a bright resonance so right now I'm also practicing voices that will sound "fuller" (like in this recording). In particular, there is a "sweet spot" in my vocal tract where if I focus the airflow there the resonance brightens a lot without strain, but it's generally challenging for me to reliably target that because my proprioceptive control of my vocal tract still needs improvement (even after a couple of years of practice). However, over the last month or so I've started getting a bit more reliable at hitting that sweet spot so I've been directing my attention a lot there in recent studies.
The attached recording is me doing a practice reading of my previous cohost post. My overall impression from listening critically to my own recording is:
- resonance is great! basically no notes
- airflow is great!
- pitch variation is perhaps too low (voice is a bit too monotone for my liking)
- pitch control is overall not great (voice squeaks a bit as i vary pitch)
If I had to rate that voice on the axes I mentioned above I'd probably give it:
- Comfortable: 5/5
- Feminine: 4.5/5
- Natural-sounding: 3.75/5
- Aesthetically pleasing to me: 3.75/5
… which is fine with me (because my current training goal is comfort).
I know how to fix the pitch-related issues, but typically if I focus my attention on those things then other things start to slip, so I want to first focus on my current goal of getting comfortable resonance + airflow solid and intuitive before I revisit shoring up the other aspects of my voice.
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For people new to voice training, resonance is (sort of) making the vocal tract smaller and it changes the overall timbre of the voice to sound more feminine. This video is a good introduction