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Platypus
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Post by Platypus on Aug 11, 2021 18:51:36 GMT
masculinization in some microcosmic context that is a good album name imo voice types are moreso pointers to which pieces of music would "fit you" the best, given classical vocal training. They aren't neccecerly arbitrary, but if your singing style lies on the outside of the classical music dogma, especially in the realm of tone manipulation, then voice type might not be that helpful of an indicator. |
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Baronessa
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Favourite singer: Prince
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Post by Baronessa on Aug 11, 2021 22:12:05 GMT
I don't really care about the voice type stuff, but I do want to point out that raising your larynx for vocal feminisation will do you more harm than good in the long run. It's extremely fatiguing to keep up essentially a 'swallowing' position in your throat, you can't yell effectively with a raised larynx, etc.
I think you're right about playing around with mixed voice, though, which kind of ties to your point about 'cord closure'. Personally I'd consider it a rather harmful myth that constricting your vocal cords themselves is conducive to vocal feminisation. It's a bad habit that will lead to a significant amount of vocal damage if done consistently enough. It seems counterintuitive, but a lot of vocal feminisation is about contradicting the muscle reflexes that cause these tense spots in your voice box.
I'd argue that a vast majority of the sound achieved by the women in your links is thanks to manipulation of mouth space and vowels -- particularly vowel formation in your vocal tract and not necessarily vowels as you think of them in written language. Mouth space and vowels form how your voice reproduces the overtone series, as in which tones are more prominent and that. There are few voices I'd consider 'naturally' big or light, most of the breadth of your sound depending highly on particularly the undertones of your voice.
In the spirit of that observation, in regards to changing voice types, despite how well you've learned to manage these spaces, the length of your vocal cords is not going to change. There are muscle memories you can develop that would be less conducive to sounding big and low, and lows might feel harder for you after a certain period of time of conditioning yourself to speak femme, but you could still hit an F2 if your vocal cords were long and thick enough to do that.
To come back to your point about mixed voice: The key, I feel, to practicing safe, healthy vocal feminisation is exploring different volumes and tonalities within your mixed voice and learning to manage other areas of constriction in your vocal tract, such as the false folds, while keeping your glottis relaxed enough that you can slip into vocal fry without having to flip from mixed voice to chest voice. Anyway, I'm not trying to prove any sort of point here, these are just my own projections because I felt like rambling in a melatonin haze.
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glo
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Post by glo on Aug 11, 2021 23:24:18 GMT
in regards to changing voice types, despite how well you've learned to manage these spaces, the length of your vocal cords is not going to change. There are muscle memories you can develop that would be less conducive to sounding big and low, and lows might feel harder for you after a certain period of time of conditioning yourself to speak femme, but you could still hit an F2 if your vocal cords were long and thick enough to do that. That said, vocal tract & larynx length isn’t the sole cause of how high or low your voice can sound… to me, the whole voice type thing from that vantage is subjective because most aren’t scoped for their larynx size, and most sing regardless of it at least as far as directly. But I guess it is true that if you have a long neck and thick folds, that will always be a major factor in how you can sound. As far as high larynx, I don’t know. My stance is that high larynx =/= constriction. Constriction is impedance and obstruction from muscles external to the larynx. High larynx just means that the hyoid bone has extended upward to allow for the larynx to be in a smaller position, which is at least at default essential for upper-octave notes anyway. In fact, on that note I think constriction is more of a subjective value placement on how the voice is being used, even though if sound can efficiently and consistently made in that position, then it is doing little or no harm. The larynx adapts to using the new position and defaults to a thinner, smaller configuration. And with all of that, the mixed voice used is voice feminization is still largely chest voice, just thinned out and brightened and at a higher pitch. An update — it is worth noting that it is possible to masculinize the voice too, though less significantly than to feminize it. Instead of creating a smaller space for phonation, you enlarge it through a lower default larynx position, adding fry and chest resonance, and practicing a lower default pitch. I’m not sure how much the tongue has to do with things. In all the training I’ve done on my own and with specialists alike, the placement & adduction of the larynx as well as the amount of pharyngeal space have been the main concerns. It’s also worth noting that an F2 can be trained to be more resonant, and it can also be trained for voices that might generally be deemed contralto or mezzo voices. It’s uncommon but not unheard of, and all the more for notes of A2 and higher. A bird told me that Rosa Ponselle was capable as low as the mid 2nd octave, and she was a dramatic coloratura soprano (though I believe she trained as a contralto early on; hardly unheard of either). |
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