I’ve been doing some voice training by reading to my mum from a book (Cornelia Funke’s “Drachenreiter” in German) and I’ve recorded me while reading 2 chapters each in these recordings:
https://files.catbox.moe/u4kpop.mp3
https://files.catbox.moe/j0iejo.mp3
I just wanted some feedback from people who don’t know me personally on how it sounds. If it sounds feminine or if you have some tips on how to improve maybe.
Sounds feminine to me, congrats :D I am not a fluent german speaker though, so I don’t know about specific intonation/prononciation, but your pitch and timbre is on point
German speaker here: I hear this as a female voice. Congrats :-)
Thank you so much! It’s so weird to me because when I listen to myself it sounds so unfeminine. I’m almost crying from your comment 😭
I guess hearing your own voice from a recording is always weird, plus you are aware of all the techniques you use to sound like this so that probably comes into play
Wow, those are some long clips! I listened through the first one. Here’s my (honest) feedback (not a German speaker).
Most of the time you sound to me like a woman speaking in a relaxed voice at the low end of her range; kind of middle-aged I guess? You sometimes slip just for a moment into a more male-sounding (heavy & large) tone, particularly at the end of phrases, but the effect is more “huh, that was weird” rather than “it’s a man!”.
By the second half you’ve climbed a semitone or two I think, and your expression is a bit more free and lively. It sounds a lot more natural, but slips stand out a little more.
Did you know you can do the same resonance adjustments when clearing your throat, coughing and so on? Perhaps if you started off with a more girlish “ahem” noise that might key listeners in to what you’re going for.
Anyway, it was not at all unpleasant to listen to, and I think sounds fairly natural and feminine overall. Good job and thanks for sharing!
Thank you. This is really helpful feedback! ♥️
Yeah that for sure passes! How did you practice for this, if I can ask? I can get the pitch down at this point I think, but stuff like intonation is harder
Thank you! ♥️
I mostly practiced with the whisper siren exercise: https://youtu.be/F6Noi2qERus
I practiced that every time I found space in my day and then I also practiced by just reading aloud for myself (news articles mostly) and recorded that with this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.DevExtras.VoiceTools which helped me get the pitch down although the female and male ranges can be misleading since my mum for example goes into the male range sometimes and is mostly in the lower female range and also in the androgynous range of pitch.
But getting the resonance down with the whisper siren exercise is the most important thing.
The hardest part for me so far was actually using my voice in front of another person though. My mum is the only person so far that has heard my new voice in person 😅
Edit: this all happened over the course of almost a year with multi month breaks in between because I got a bit discouraged without real feedback from other people and I didn’t take any voice lessons from professionals.
I went over some lessons talking about raising the larynx at first, but got discouraged and focused on some other stuff. I feel I’m a bit better equipped now to just work on that, so thank you for the great video <3
Also helps to hear your one year progress
Do you know if it’s possible to practice before beginning hrt?, I was wondering how would my voice sound or does it change a lot after beginning the treatment?
Unfortunately your voice doesn’t change at all through HRT. And yes you can definitely begin before HRT I did so myself.
Thanks!
