Voice Training Day One

All the angst surrounding my first day of voice training has come and gone, mixed in with a liberal amount of excitement.

As I waited, I had myself convinced the person doing the work wouldn't have any experience at all with a transgender women going down the same path as I. As it turned out, a totally unfounded fear since the first thing she asked me was how long I had been out. And, what pronouns I preferred!

Then, we embarked on an hour's worth of measuring my voice on a neat little machine with a microphone and blue lines with solid gray ones. The closer I could get my blue lines to the gray ones the better.  It turns out too, my natural voice isn't so far off a feminine range, which should make the whole process easier. I thought all in all the session went pretty successful.

My vocal problems seem to come from trying to do too much. For example, when I try to raise my voice too high, it cracks. Then becomes scratchy.

All of that is the good news, the bad news is my instructor just finished up her masters from Ohio University and is headed South to Charleston, South Carolina, so I have to start all over with a new person in two weeks when I go back.

In the meantime, I have daily homework assignments to do to designed to stretch my vocal cords more or less permanently.  Plus, I have to work on reversing fifty plus years of male style talking. Men have a tendency to speak more forcefully. I have to work how I approach my sentences and attempt to speak in a more "sing-song" pattern.  I have to do it until it becomes natural.

The things I have on my side are time and enthusiasm.

I just hope my next instructor is as good!