How do I train my voice to be higher or lower?
Changing the pitch of your voice naturally is difficult, and takes a lot of time and practice to achieve noticeable effects, but there are a couple of things you can do to safely train your voice to be lower. However, none of the suggestions here come from medical professionals. These methods have been selected because they shouldn’t damage your vocal cords, but if ever you feel like they’re straining your voice or damaging your throat, you should stop immediately.
When you start out, you might only be able to practice for five minutes a day. While this can be frustrating, it’s better than causing permanent damage to your voice. It’s a good idea to find someone you can practise with when you first start trying to train your voice, for safety and for conversational practice. If you’d find it helpful, you can record your voice so that you can hear the changes over time and monitor your progress, which might give you a boost in confidence.
There’s an app you can download for free called ‘Eva’ which is designed for trans people trying to train their voice. There are two versions of the app, ‘Eva FTM’ and ‘Eva MTF’. The apps include video-based instruction and practice, different ‘lessons’ such as on breath and pitch, self-guided exercises, visually interactive tools, and a pitch-tuner and tracker tool.
Deepening your voice:
Firstly, you might want to do some vocal exercises. If you sing, you can use very similar exercises to what you use when you're warming up your voice, such as scales. If you're not the singing type, a simple exercise you can do is to pick one sound, such as 'ahh', and try raise and lower your voice as much as you can, holding the sound, until you run out of breath. If you like singing, practise singing along to songs with male singers whose voices aren't too deep, and try to match their pitch. You can also try humming deeply from your throat, raising your chin a little, slowly, as you hum. Begin speaking directly from your humming voice. Obviously, you can't burst out humming in everyday interaction, so this is something you'll have to practise when you're on your own. However, you can achieve a similar effect if you start your sentences with an 'umm', 'uhh', or ‘mm’. It won't make you sound particularly articulate, but if you're feeling especially dysphoric or nervous, it can help you deepen your voice a little bit quite quickly.
Experiment with your breathing. Try to breathe in from your diaphragm, rather than taking shallow breaths. If you take a breath and feel your chest and shoulders rise, you're breathing from your chest, not your diaphragm. When you breathe from your diaphragm, you should feel your stomach expanding and contracting. Inhale through your nose and down to your belly, and speak when you breathe out. When you speak from your diaphragm, you'll project more easily, and your voice will be a bit deeper. Try speaking through your mouth, rather than your nose. It’s possible to get a deep nasal voice, but it sounds more masculine if you speak through your mouth.
To deepen your voice, you'll want to try and lower your pitch. To do this, relax your throat as much as possible, to avoid tightening your vocal cords. Moisten your mouth and throat, and hold your chin up. Swallow before you speak, and speak slowly, lowering your voice at the beginning of your sentences and trying to maintain that pitch. If you find yourself speaking quickly, you'll probably also find your pitch rising. Try not to raise your pitch at the end of your sentences, but keep your tone more monotonous. Emphasise sounds that allow you to deepen your voice; for example, lengthening your vowels allows you to make them sound deeper. Experiment with what you find easiest to pronounce with your deeper voice and play to those strengths.
When trying to deepen your voice, you quite literally want to speak from as low down as possible. Pay attention to where you feel and hear your voice emanating from; it’ll probably be your throat. Your pitch is highest when you speak at the top of your throat, or when you use your ‘head voice’. Speaking from your chest will produce a deeper sound, although it might be airy and a little soft. Ideally, you want to learn how to speak from what feels like your gut. To do this, you'll have to project your voice, which comes from breathing from your diaphragm and reaching down to your belly before you speak. This process of learning to speak from your diaphragm takes a lot of practice, and initially you probably won't hear much of a difference, but in time, you'll be able to make your voice deeper and deeper. It might be frustrating, but take baby steps. If you try to make drastic changes to your voice, you'll risk straining your vocal cords. Avoid speaking with a growl or rasp, as although this produces a deeper throat voice, it can damage your vocal cords and you'll end up with a hoarse voice. It's also more difficult to project when you're speaking from your throat.
Start out by using your deep voice for short periods of time, and gradually build them up. It'll take time, but eventually you'll be able to lower your voice quite substantially, just from practice.
Feminising your voice:
Unfortunately, oestrogen won’t change the pitch of your voice, so there are more barriers to feminising your voice than masculinising it. However, there are a couple of techniques with which you can safely train yourself to raise the pitch of your voice.
As suggested above, singing and voice exercises can help you loosen up your voice box and extend your pitch range. If you like to sing, choose a song with a female vocalist, with a voice that isn’t too high-pitched, and sing along, trying to emulate her pitch. You can also use vocal exercises, such as singing a rising scale. Every time you do this, try to reach a note higher than you did the previous time. The aim is to create a higher ‘baseline’ pitch than you previously used. Don’t overdo it, or you’ll end up sounding squeaky; if your throat starts to feel scratchy, you’re straining it too much. Take baby steps, keep practising, and see what works for you.
Another exercise you can do to build up muscle control in your throat is raising your larynx. Take a sip of water so your throat isn’t dry. Put your hand on your larynx, so you can feel what’s happening. Don’t hold it in place - this will damage it. Swallow. You should feel the bump hop upwards. Keep doing this for a few minutes, and try to hold the bump up there for as long as you can, using your throat muscles, not your hand. Because you’re swallowing, you won’t be able to breathe; this is normal, but make sure to stop if you get out of breath. The aim of this exercise is to eventually be able to consciously control your larynx, so you can hold it higher in your throat.
To soften your voice, you can try to speak more breathily, which is what you do naturally when whispering. This is called opening up the glottis. This is achieved when your vocal cords do not vibrate (such as when you say ‘hhh’ or ‘ssss’) - the air simply passes through. You can hear the difference between when your vocal cords don’t vibrate, such as with the sound ‘sss’, and when they do vibrate, such as with ‘zzz’. Try to find a semi-whispering position somewhere between these two, which will add a breathiness to your voice. When you speak, try to hold your tongue higher and flatter, producing a ‘dental’ sound (one that involves the teeth, like ‘t’ and ‘d’), and use lots of breath. This comes across as softer and breathier. Initially, it might sound husky rather than breathy, but keep practising and eventually you’ll be able to master it.
Altering your intonation is another way in which you can feminise your voice. Try raising the pitch of your voice at the ends of your sentences, so it sounds like you’re speaking ‘up’. This is what you naturally do with questions, but try do this with statements as well. In general, try adding a bit of a lilt to your speaking pattern, rather than speaking monotonously. Start your sentences softly, and speak slowly, pronouncing your words clearly. Round your lips a little as you speak and enunciate each word; try not to mumble. Try not to ‘swallow’ small words like ‘the’, ‘him’, ‘she’, and so on. Use full sentences, and avoid short cuts, as these are typically associated with a more masculine way of talking.
Finally, you can train yourself to raise the pitch of your voice. What you need to try do is speak with your head voice’, rather than speaking from your chest. Open your mouth a little more, use more air, and push’ your voice up into your head. Speak as if you’re really excited about something (or even better, talk about something you’re genuinely excited about), and you should hear your voice rising until it feels like it’s so high in your throat that it’s in your head; this is ‘head resonance’. After a lot of practice, you should be able to feel your voice vibrating at the top of your throat. Initially, your head voice or ‘falsetto’ will sound like Minnie Mouse - this is normal, and a stage that most transfeminine people have to go through when trying to use their head voice. Practise speaking in this voice and gradually try to lower the pitch of your falsetto to something more natural-sounding. Learning to speak loudly while retaining a higher pitch can be especially difficult - it’s hard to project using your head voice, and can be tiring, so build up stamina by practising regularly for short periods of time.
All of this will take time, and it won’t feel natural until you’ve been practising for quite a while. The trick is to do it for a short amount of time every day, and gradually, you’ll be able to raise the pitch of your voice bit by bit, and it will come more naturally.
And that’s all folks! We hope you’ve found this page useful. Please contact your trans reps on outrans01@gmail.com or outrans02@gmail.com if you would like something to be featured here or wish to provide feedback on the guidelines provided here.
Changing the pitch of your voice naturally is difficult, and takes a lot of time and practice to achieve noticeable effects, but there are a couple of things you can do to safely train your voice to be lower. However, none of the suggestions here come from medical professionals. These methods have been selected because they shouldn’t damage your vocal cords, but if ever you feel like they’re straining your voice or damaging your throat, you should stop immediately.
When you start out, you might only be able to practice for five minutes a day. While this can be frustrating, it’s better than causing permanent damage to your voice. It’s a good idea to find someone you can practise with when you first start trying to train your voice, for safety and for conversational practice. If you’d find it helpful, you can record your voice so that you can hear the changes over time and monitor your progress, which might give you a boost in confidence.
There’s an app you can download for free called ‘Eva’ which is designed for trans people trying to train their voice. There are two versions of the app, ‘Eva FTM’ and ‘Eva MTF’. The apps include video-based instruction and practice, different ‘lessons’ such as on breath and pitch, self-guided exercises, visually interactive tools, and a pitch-tuner and tracker tool.
Deepening your voice:
Firstly, you might want to do some vocal exercises. If you sing, you can use very similar exercises to what you use when you're warming up your voice, such as scales. If you're not the singing type, a simple exercise you can do is to pick one sound, such as 'ahh', and try raise and lower your voice as much as you can, holding the sound, until you run out of breath. If you like singing, practise singing along to songs with male singers whose voices aren't too deep, and try to match their pitch. You can also try humming deeply from your throat, raising your chin a little, slowly, as you hum. Begin speaking directly from your humming voice. Obviously, you can't burst out humming in everyday interaction, so this is something you'll have to practise when you're on your own. However, you can achieve a similar effect if you start your sentences with an 'umm', 'uhh', or ‘mm’. It won't make you sound particularly articulate, but if you're feeling especially dysphoric or nervous, it can help you deepen your voice a little bit quite quickly.
Experiment with your breathing. Try to breathe in from your diaphragm, rather than taking shallow breaths. If you take a breath and feel your chest and shoulders rise, you're breathing from your chest, not your diaphragm. When you breathe from your diaphragm, you should feel your stomach expanding and contracting. Inhale through your nose and down to your belly, and speak when you breathe out. When you speak from your diaphragm, you'll project more easily, and your voice will be a bit deeper. Try speaking through your mouth, rather than your nose. It’s possible to get a deep nasal voice, but it sounds more masculine if you speak through your mouth.
To deepen your voice, you'll want to try and lower your pitch. To do this, relax your throat as much as possible, to avoid tightening your vocal cords. Moisten your mouth and throat, and hold your chin up. Swallow before you speak, and speak slowly, lowering your voice at the beginning of your sentences and trying to maintain that pitch. If you find yourself speaking quickly, you'll probably also find your pitch rising. Try not to raise your pitch at the end of your sentences, but keep your tone more monotonous. Emphasise sounds that allow you to deepen your voice; for example, lengthening your vowels allows you to make them sound deeper. Experiment with what you find easiest to pronounce with your deeper voice and play to those strengths.
When trying to deepen your voice, you quite literally want to speak from as low down as possible. Pay attention to where you feel and hear your voice emanating from; it’ll probably be your throat. Your pitch is highest when you speak at the top of your throat, or when you use your ‘head voice’. Speaking from your chest will produce a deeper sound, although it might be airy and a little soft. Ideally, you want to learn how to speak from what feels like your gut. To do this, you'll have to project your voice, which comes from breathing from your diaphragm and reaching down to your belly before you speak. This process of learning to speak from your diaphragm takes a lot of practice, and initially you probably won't hear much of a difference, but in time, you'll be able to make your voice deeper and deeper. It might be frustrating, but take baby steps. If you try to make drastic changes to your voice, you'll risk straining your vocal cords. Avoid speaking with a growl or rasp, as although this produces a deeper throat voice, it can damage your vocal cords and you'll end up with a hoarse voice. It's also more difficult to project when you're speaking from your throat.
Start out by using your deep voice for short periods of time, and gradually build them up. It'll take time, but eventually you'll be able to lower your voice quite substantially, just from practice.
Feminising your voice:
Unfortunately, oestrogen won’t change the pitch of your voice, so there are more barriers to feminising your voice than masculinising it. However, there are a couple of techniques with which you can safely train yourself to raise the pitch of your voice.
As suggested above, singing and voice exercises can help you loosen up your voice box and extend your pitch range. If you like to sing, choose a song with a female vocalist, with a voice that isn’t too high-pitched, and sing along, trying to emulate her pitch. You can also use vocal exercises, such as singing a rising scale. Every time you do this, try to reach a note higher than you did the previous time. The aim is to create a higher ‘baseline’ pitch than you previously used. Don’t overdo it, or you’ll end up sounding squeaky; if your throat starts to feel scratchy, you’re straining it too much. Take baby steps, keep practising, and see what works for you.
Another exercise you can do to build up muscle control in your throat is raising your larynx. Take a sip of water so your throat isn’t dry. Put your hand on your larynx, so you can feel what’s happening. Don’t hold it in place - this will damage it. Swallow. You should feel the bump hop upwards. Keep doing this for a few minutes, and try to hold the bump up there for as long as you can, using your throat muscles, not your hand. Because you’re swallowing, you won’t be able to breathe; this is normal, but make sure to stop if you get out of breath. The aim of this exercise is to eventually be able to consciously control your larynx, so you can hold it higher in your throat.
To soften your voice, you can try to speak more breathily, which is what you do naturally when whispering. This is called opening up the glottis. This is achieved when your vocal cords do not vibrate (such as when you say ‘hhh’ or ‘ssss’) - the air simply passes through. You can hear the difference between when your vocal cords don’t vibrate, such as with the sound ‘sss’, and when they do vibrate, such as with ‘zzz’. Try to find a semi-whispering position somewhere between these two, which will add a breathiness to your voice. When you speak, try to hold your tongue higher and flatter, producing a ‘dental’ sound (one that involves the teeth, like ‘t’ and ‘d’), and use lots of breath. This comes across as softer and breathier. Initially, it might sound husky rather than breathy, but keep practising and eventually you’ll be able to master it.
Altering your intonation is another way in which you can feminise your voice. Try raising the pitch of your voice at the ends of your sentences, so it sounds like you’re speaking ‘up’. This is what you naturally do with questions, but try do this with statements as well. In general, try adding a bit of a lilt to your speaking pattern, rather than speaking monotonously. Start your sentences softly, and speak slowly, pronouncing your words clearly. Round your lips a little as you speak and enunciate each word; try not to mumble. Try not to ‘swallow’ small words like ‘the’, ‘him’, ‘she’, and so on. Use full sentences, and avoid short cuts, as these are typically associated with a more masculine way of talking.
Finally, you can train yourself to raise the pitch of your voice. What you need to try do is speak with your head voice’, rather than speaking from your chest. Open your mouth a little more, use more air, and push’ your voice up into your head. Speak as if you’re really excited about something (or even better, talk about something you’re genuinely excited about), and you should hear your voice rising until it feels like it’s so high in your throat that it’s in your head; this is ‘head resonance’. After a lot of practice, you should be able to feel your voice vibrating at the top of your throat. Initially, your head voice or ‘falsetto’ will sound like Minnie Mouse - this is normal, and a stage that most transfeminine people have to go through when trying to use their head voice. Practise speaking in this voice and gradually try to lower the pitch of your falsetto to something more natural-sounding. Learning to speak loudly while retaining a higher pitch can be especially difficult - it’s hard to project using your head voice, and can be tiring, so build up stamina by practising regularly for short periods of time.
All of this will take time, and it won’t feel natural until you’ve been practising for quite a while. The trick is to do it for a short amount of time every day, and gradually, you’ll be able to raise the pitch of your voice bit by bit, and it will come more naturally.
And that’s all folks! We hope you’ve found this page useful. Please contact your trans reps on outrans01@gmail.com or outrans02@gmail.com if you would like something to be featured here or wish to provide feedback on the guidelines provided here.
