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Voice Map is released! See here for a giant map of (almost) all voice characteristics and pedagogy!Table of contents
How to do Low Fem Voices
Why low pitch is difficult
While pitch itself is not a gendered factor there are several things that are conflated with it that we need to control to achieve a low pitch feminine voice.
Vocal weight
Vocal weight is much harder to keep light at a low pitch. To achieve a low pitch feminine voice, we need a very high level of control over vocal weight. This can be done by slowly creeping the pitch down while keeping an eye on the vocal weight.
It’s best to do this in smooth steps, so start at 200hz, slide down to 180 and speak, then slide down to 160 and speak, then 140 and then 120. It’s important to speak at each step because a solid tone like “aaaa” can sound ambiguous, but speech contains much more intricacy and will be more obvious if we were to get heavier.
Bringing low vocal weight down in pitch:
YouTube - click to load the iframe
With appropriate microbehaviours and general vocal control, vocal weight or resonance can be in the androgynous range and the voice will still sound feminine.
Resonance
Resonance is somewhat linked to pitch naturally, but it is often the case that when coming down to a low pitch, we go too low in resonance as well - the larynx drops down. A good way to combat this is to simply redrill resonance at the low pitch, and try to keep the larynx fairly high when dropping in pitch.
Redrilling at a low pitch can be difficult when doing an unvoiced resonance slide, as we have a tendency to raise in pitch (without expressing a pitch) during the unvoiced slide, and then find that we are now back to a high pitch and need to slide down again. For this reason it can be best to redrill resonance voiced. Normally increasing resonance voiced is quite difficult so learning to do so at a medium pitch may be necessary.
Another note is that some people link resonance with vocal weight as well, meaning that when we add resonance at a low pitch we’re more likely to add vocal weight as well. Pay attention to vocal weight when raising pitch in order to combat this over the course of training.
Microbehaviours
At a high pitch, things like microbehaviours and speech patterns are slightly less important because all the other large scale components of voice, like vocal weight and resonance are easier to maintain and somewhat cover up any inconsistencies. That is to say, a typically feminine low vocal weight high resonance voice at a high pitch with masculine speech patterns and microbehaviours, and inconsistent glottal behaviours, will still pass as feminine. The more stress on the configuration we add, by going low in pitch or higher in vocal weight or lower in resonance, the more these features (like speech patterns and microbehaviours) matter.
In other words, while microbehaviours don’t matter much in typically feminine voices, they do matter a lot in atypical voices.
Learning to do a low pitch feminine voice or a high vocal weight one can actually help significantly with getting a more natural configuration, because we are forced to learn more feminine speech patterns and microbehaviours.
YouTube - click to load the iframe
Voice examples
imawonder
Really good for learning brightness despite a very low pitch
very bright
slightly heavy
low pitch
vocal weight 🥁 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟤 heavier
resonance 🎻 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟤 🟤 medium high
pitch 🎵 🟡 🟡 🟤 🟤 🟤 low (150hz - 250hz intonation, ~500hz peaks)
difficulty 💔 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟤 🟤 medium hard (bright, buzzy, high intonation peaks)
YouTube - click to load the iframe
Nurse
Perfect for learning a deep feminine voice at very (120hz) low pitch.
very low pitch
smooth
deep fem
low resonance
vocal weight 🥁 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟤 🟤 medium heavy
resonance 🎻 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟤 medium high
pitch 🎵 🟡 🟤 🟤 🟤 🟤 very low(120 - 200hz)
difficulty 💔 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟡 🟤 hard (good glottal behaviour at very very low pitch)
YouTube - click to load the iframe