Voice Training and The Myth of Opposition

[@anarch0slurpie]

really really encouraging video. i chronically get discoraged and stop my training but theres been a few times you all have pulled me back in. thank you for not giving up on us even when we do.

[@M-CH_]

The "Trans Overton Window" stuff is also relevant to other aspects of transition than voice.

[@EmptyOverture]

This video was such a good mental reset! Fantastically paced and worded, and hella inspirational!

[@vocal-team]

Hey, I'm in this! Lovely essay Viv - the medley of inspirational female voices in the middle of the video was actually just what I needed to hear today. Take a deep breath. Scrunch up your shoulders, and then relax them. You got this. 💙

[@Fiona_fml]

What’s helped me the most to be comfortable in my voice is paying attention to the diversity of female voices out there. Realizing there are cis women with deeper voices than mine helped me to adapt my femimine voice into one that actually suited me

[@jenth3hen]

I made the mistake of being too soft, and almost sheepish sounding for a long time. Thank you for all these pointers.

[@albionmerrick]

Vivienne is such an incredible pressenter! this video was so well made and so digestible

[@TakeWalker]

This is such a good video! I often feel that, given my build and stature, i need to look and sound as extreme-feminine as possible in order to be seen as female. And i do see it as a defense mechanism, because being perceived as anything in between is so dangerous right now. But you're right that there's such a wide range of femalr voices, and even on the lower end, there's a lot more that will register as feminine with the lowest common denominator.

[@sofieselnes477]

Thank you so much for this video! I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but this totally reframed things for me at a time I really needed it! Finding “my” voice is complicated and going to take time but I’m really grateful for your words helping me keep it in perspective ❤

[@nataliejennings2620]

Oh wow this video is so heartwarming and thought-provoking!!! These are ideas I've learned about before. Avoiding a reductive oppositional understanding of how gender or secondary sex characteristics interact with how we perceive our voice is so important though. And I think that while most trans people don't have a consciously simplistic oppositional view of this regarding gender or voice, speaking for myself, I suspect that this tendency still subtly influences me. Vivienne's analysis of this topic is intellectually thorough, emotionally sensitive, compelling and sincere. I think for a lot of trans people, myself included, it would do much good to continuously reflect on the ideas she brings forward! 💜

[@shilohkostenko]

I was having a bit of a time with this a few days ago. I had been making good progress with blending weight and resonance, and was working on making the voice flow more "naturally", but the result I was getting didn't seem all that different from a somewhat lighter, brighter version of my usual "masculine" voice, and it was discouraging. Like I was taking this whole trip around the block just to wind up next door. After watching this, I see that: 1. the end result may, in fact, not be all that different, especially if my voice wasn't egregiously masculine to begin with, and 2. it may also be different enough in the ways that matter, which are harder to perceive from my point of view.

[@ServingSass]

Long day, I am fresh out of thoughts. This was good information and inspiration.

[@Babe-mh5gw]

i super needed to hear all this, i’m so happy you made this ❤❤❤

[@Ancusohm]

Great work, Viv! Thanks for the video

[@MxBraeWilliams]

I really needed to hear this!

[@priscillabalqis5539]

thank you, you learned me the pedestal and exlucion of minority, and the Overton applied to gendering of voices, very interesting : broaden the criteria instead of excluding the exception!

[@yawoada]

not the reagan jumpscare 😭 super informative video!

[@PetraBrown]

Sir Alec Guinness has a kindly voice, a real Gentleman, never gruff or aggressive in bearing. never big in muscle, not a boxer or a weight lifter, but a wonderful athlete in an amateur or charity race*

[@temporary_error_3264]

Play VRChat! I do not care if you don’t have a headset, there is a desktop version. I promise, you pass far more than you realize. VRChat will expose you to so many different types of people so often to the point where YOU won’t even be able to tell people apart on any basis. From personal experience, I hear my voice and freak out because I believe that people will absolutely think I’m a dude… However! Literally every person I meet asks why my voice is so attractive and label me a “dommy mommy.” Men, women, in-between, and neither all believe I am a woman despite the lack of my own belief. Install that shit asap and practice!

[@ae8_little]

Thank you for the video on the Myth of Opposition in transvocal training. Voice is like a wave functions, with position wave function Ψ() possible degrees of voice feminisation at any point in a period of time, and momentum wave function Φ() possible directions current vocal gender can go at any moment in a period of time. Observing it at only point in time, we crush it to a single out-of-context point. And we can integrate and average the points over a period of time like ∫: from t-30s: to t-0s; or ∫: voice clip duration, but one average cannot give us the integration of the whole history of one's journey of voice, nor analytic understanding of the voice at each minute moment. To wrestle with angels...I have grown up having interest in the voice of 少女的な声優 (in transvocal spaces, years ago it had a big spurt with Lsomethingsomething's first however dated voice guide: maybe now, let's call it shoujo voice, like mahou-shoujo: Magic Girl). However, I had many struggle with the self-sabotaging extraneous effort of strain and extraneous effort of comparison-opposition (the opposition mentioned in this video). But: like the origin story of Galactus (specifically Earth-616): after some escitalopram, my brain unclogged and I flew into the sun: and henceforth I obtained the vocal ability comparable to 声優 in Japan (most seiyuu are voiceacter+singer, while in north america, i get a vibe one can ex. be a voice acter without also being a singer). Vocal ability on the scale comparable to vocal artist like ななひら, a whole new vocal realm to explore...o: Also from that recent breakthrough (a few weeks ago from now for context), I learnt how to communicate with human also at that breakthrough moment; @w@; communication is shapeshifting: even western local friend groups have strict regulation on speech pattern, intonation, and what concepts you can even bring up: to even be comprehended. People struggled to understand me: because not many people read outside their local interests 😅.

[@bucephalus00]

KZbin decided not to tell me about this video despite me being subscribed. Bizzaire

[@diablominero]

Most people perceive gender presentation as a holistic average, not as a list of characteristics. If you're trying to be perceived in a way that doesn't align with some of the characteristics you can't control, it does make sense to push the ones you can control a bit harder than you'd otherwise have to. That'd be why hyper-fem and hyper-masc clothing styles are common in people who've just started transition, and more neutral styles get more popular once the HRT starts working.

[@j-se6js]

yeah! I’m ftm and cut my hair really short, way shorter than I’d usually like because I can’t start hrt yet and hair and my voice are the only things I feel like I can control. I’m looking forward to the day I feel more comfortable letting my hair grow longer and talking with an excited higher pitch and not feeling dysphoric about it :)

[@shelby2488]

That's clearly a new person in the video. Why was there no introduction on who this person is? I really liked the video. I offen wonder why I go so high in pitch. Wish I knew how to get a lower feminine voice.

[@LunaRoseManor]

A philosophy lesson in my voice training. Love to see it.

[@wolfetteplays8894]

I personally disagree with gender being socially constructed and the blank slate theory adjacent ideological tangents, but this video was still well constructed and helpful. Thanks ❤

[@Autumn_Atomic]

I've recently had vocal surgery..

[@teodescartes1771]

Did it work at all? I’ve seen so many people get it and it not work at all 🫤

[@Autumn_Atomic]

@@teodescartes1771 seems to be working just fine. They have a newer procedure that's less invasive. Uses lazers

[@Autumn_Atomic]

@teodescartes1771 I'm still recovering, when it sounds good it sounds really good. I should be fully healed around February or March of 2025, which is typical.

[@wolfetteplays8894]

@@teodescartes1771that mostly applies to CTA… not more advanced ones like Femlar or other resonance alternating voice surgeries.

[@PetraBrown]

I am rebelling from the battle of the sexes, let’s create a much sweeter world, there are tall females and little guys in our world, we can and do care for people for folk who are kind, rougher types do not appeal to us ❤ From Petra

[@BeccaBecca71]

❤❤❤❤

[@PsPs-ux8kh]

for a trans woman, Is it ok to do voice feminization practices while doing vocal and singing practices? or should it be feminizing your voice first and then move on to singing?

[@MollyNguyen-mp2ji]

💖💖💖💖💖💖

[@Autumn_Atomic]

Hello.

[@dannii_L]

I think using some kind of AI voice changer like Eleven Labs would help a lot for people, like me, who struggle listening to their own voice back. The ability to change your own voice into other accents or languages while still sounding like yourself, removes a large portion about what you intuitively think of as "you" when you hear yourself back and treat with such enormous negative bias. I would expect it should allow you to much more fairly appraise your own voice. Haven't tried this yet because I'm just that lazy.

[@ZiddLir]

Are you trans?

[@stephonparker87]

black women are so divine, some of y'all hetero's are missing out

[@GHOST-fk2gi]

is this how its going to be now? So you got lazy and hired a black man to do your work. What a downfall