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Voice Map is released! See here for a giant map of (almost) all voice characteristics and pedagogy!Table of contents
Vocal Weight
What is vocal weight?
Vocal weight is a perceived quality of voice. It describes a heaviness or rumble that is present in most masculine voices. It’s a substantial part of changing the gender of the voice and plays a role in pitch range too. Although it doesn’t directly describe a physical modification, it does allude to one. It can be thought of as an educated guess at the amount of Vocal Fold Vibratory Mass or “how much of the vocal folds is moving”.
Main notes
- lighter vocal weight is considered more feminine, and heavier vocal weight is considered more masculine
- heavy vocal weight is encouraged by low pitches and becomes more straining at high pitches
- is a guess at the amount of the vocal folds that is vibrating
- breathiness, unless we’re making vocal weight heavier, is to be avoided
- higher airflow and pressure encourages more vocal weight
This is also known as:
- OQ/CQ open and closed quotient
- vocal fold vibratory mass
- thickness and thinness of the folds
Explanation
It is essentially a way of describing the sound quality caused by the amount of mass with which the vocal folds interact. When we have more mass involved in the vibration of the vocal folds, we get a heavier, more rumbly sound. The muscles that control lowering pitch are largely thought to be responsible for this. When we have high vocal weight at a high pitch, it becomes difficult and effortful or even straining because these muscles are fighting against eachother. This means that high pitches that are relaxed are also most likely light in vocal weight. Breathiness - and some other usually undesired features - can hide this, which is why it’s very important to avoid breathiness when training vocal weight.
Under normal circumstances:
- High pitch + heavy vocal weight = tension and effort
- High pitch, relaxed and non-breathy = probably light vocal weight
If we raise pitch and it’s extremely easy or feels exactly the same as any other voice we use, it’s light. If we raise pitch and it feels like we need to push the voice to go higher, then it’s heavy.
Sliding up in pitch can encourage ‘belting’ or keeping high vocal weight, so it’s important to stay relaxed and even let the voice transition into M2. Sliding down in pitch tends to release this somewhat, if we do it relaxed and semi-quietly.
For increasing vocal weight, we need to be careful to not go into pressed phonation. Generally the heaviest vocal weight we can do is going to be the lowest note we can do before we go into vocal fry. Lowering pitch tends to increase vocal weight, and so getting heavier often uses downward slides to the lowest note in order to slowly build up vocal weight. Sliding down slightly loudly but without high closure (so, staying normal or slightly breathy) will tend to increase vocal weight. Breathiness can be used provided we don’t rely on it at any point or use it in a speaking voice.
It’s important however to be aware that pitch is not the only way to affect weight. We can isolate it and get light weight at a low pitch for example or heavy weight at a high pitch. This extra control is very useful - not only does it prevent us from accidentally slipping into another configuration but it allows us to progress faster and expand our range for this aspect more.
Here are some examples of vocal weight in action:
Examples Of Vocal Weight
Lighter Vocal Weight
Exercises for reducing vocal weight / achieving a lighter voice. This is geared toward feminisation vaguely, though how far you take each exercise is up to you!
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PIPM / Pitch Naturalisation
See the main page for a more detailed introduction and other exercises!
The idea is to start speaking at whatever is your natural relaxed pitch, with a strong tone. Don’t go breathy or quiet, keep it strong and natural. Speak a passage; let intonation be present, and make the last note of each phrase or sentence held longer and stay on the same note. This will be your base pitch. The base pitch will now rise just slightly, so the pitch you end each phrase on will be slightly higher too. Once you feel very comfortable here, let that base pitch and the whole voice float up a little further, still letting the voice rise for intonation as well. Just the act of raising the last note will shift the entire voice, and the fact that we shifted the entire voice will mean the voice will slowly and naturally adjust. How high you go is determined by which pitches are already relaxed and naturalized.
- speak at your relaxed, not-doing-anything pitch
- make sure to start strong, possibly a little bit louder and heavier than normal
- make the last word of each phrase held longer and monotone as it rests on the base pitch which helps keep the base pitch consistent
- base pitch is the pitch your voice returns to after intonation, and it’s what is raising the entire voice up to that “anchor”
- once you feel comfortable here, let that last word and note float up a tiny bit, raising the whole voice
- repeat, but don’t push the pitch too high - the goal is to naturalize all of your range, not raise pitch
- be extremely patient; if you rush or try too hard to control things, it won’t work
- lean toward less airflow but moderately loud
- going up in pitch should be extremely easy, suspiciously so; if not, spend more time letting it naturalise it here or start again
- pitch naturalisation is called that because at each pitch, the voice sounds natural as if it’s always been at this pitch and this is your “natural voice”
PIPM Intro
Example of the pitch naturalisation exercise
The “awww” Trigger
There are some behavioural triggers that encourage light vocal weight. One of these is to say “awww” as if talking to a cute puppy. We can then pitch down to where we can speak more comfortably. We need to make sure the pitch is high enough to get lighter weight (200hz or higher, usually) and low enough that we can actually speak.
After saying “awww” 1-3 times we can go into speaking in that configuration, either a passage or just narrating to ourselves.
This exercise is usually very effective if done at the right pitch and in a relaxed way. Unlike pitch slides we don’t have as much of a tendency to keep the weight high accidentally which makes it a very good exercise for if we tend to belt instead of lighten when going to high pitches.
It’s very important to imagine something cute, and get “into the character” of this, or else it won’t work at all.
The Awww Trigger for Light Vocal Weight
Pitch Slides
Pitch slides are a good way to reduce vocal weight. As we go up in pitch, the folds want to thin and vibrate at a higher rate, which decreases the amount of force and vocal weight involved in phonation. You can use pitch then to induce low vocal weight and then eventually learn to control it independently of pitch.
The exercise itself looks like this:
Pitch Slides for light vocal weight
It can be very useful to bring the low vocal weight configuration down to a low pitch. Usually this is to either get more control over it in general or to access that lower range for low pitch feminine voices.
Bringing Low vocal weight down in pitch
Yawning Exercise
Yawning typically induces lower vocal weight so we can sometimes use this to our advantage. Usually people yawn with low vocal weight and low resonance, so we can use this to see what low vocal weight sounds like for us. Some people have a tendency to abduct (go breathy) so it’s important to be aware of this and reduce the breathiness if there is any.
- yawn down to a low pitch
- reverse the yawn to come back up
- each time, go down to a higher pitch, working your way up to about 220hz or A3
- each time, make sure you check that when you go to higher resonance, it doesn’t go too heavy
Heavier Vocal Weight
Exercises for getting a heavier vocal weight. These are masculinising, but can be applied in any degree to achieve masculine or androgynous vocal weight levels.
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Pitch Slide Vocal Weight ‘Layering’
In this exercise we start at a neutral pitch and slide down, layering on progressively heavier vocal weight. It’s important as usual to avoid hyperadduction.
- start at a neutral pitch saying a vowel like “ahh” or “iii”
- let the pitch fall down to the lowest note you can do comfortably
- don’t go into fry; fry sounds like a series of ‘pops’ and is somewhat rough
- you will probably be fairly loud when doing this
- if you go ‘buzzy’ or ‘brassy’, add breathiness; if it reduces the buzziness, then you might have been doing hyperadduction or pressed fry (avoid this)
- slide back up, keeping the volume high
- slide back down again, still keeping the volume high and repeat 1-3 times
Other Info
Contains information about things like the vocal weight and closure relationship, things to avoid when training and so on.
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Vocal Weight and Airflow
Higher vocal weight requires more subglottal pressure, but not more airflow. This can seem a little counter intuitive, but we can increase air pressure without increasing airflow, since that airflow pressure is resisted by the folds. This extra resistance by the folds is what allows them to vibrate with more mass. If the airflow skipped over the folds, then they wouldn’t have the energy to move in the high vocal fold mass configuration.
- more vocal weight requires more pressure but not airflow
- you can get louder without increasing weight or pressure by using higher closure
- pressed phonation (hyperadduction) is when you add too much closure, getting to harmful levels
Closure Relationship
Adding more closure, like in yelling (loud at a high pitch) or barking (loud at a low pitch) does not necessarily add weight. Often, we hear more adduction like in hyperadduction as heavier when it’s actually just louder. It’s important to be careful not to assume that because a sound is more buzzy or louder, that it is from vocal weight.
Things vocal weight is not
Here’s a list of things that are not vocal weight, although they do affect it marginally in some cases.
- pressed phonation or hyperadduction
- breathiness
- buzziness - many things sound buzzy
- FVF constriction (which can sound buzzy)
- twang, which is a resonance effect
Warning Against Hyperadduction
Hyperadduction or pressed phonation can sound similar to vocal weight to a beginner, and so if increasing weight we can accidentally use it instead. Usually this only happens when trying to add weight. Hyperadduction sounds very buzzy, whereas vocal weight is more of rumble quality. Adding more pressure and forcing it through tightly is very bad for the vocal folds.
Breathiness
Breathiness can hide the buzziness effect of a high vocal weight voice and make it harder to hear. This is not lowering vocal weight at all, only making the high vocal weight voice softer. It’s best to avoid breathiness especially in exercises that modify vocal weight.
If we make a habit of using breathiness to hide high vocal weight and talking at a high pitch with that heavy vocal weight for too long, we can make that comfortable to the point that we cannot use normal techniques like pitch slides to reduce weight, as the comfortable thing to do is stay heavy, rather than relax into light vocal weight like most exercises rely on.
Using glottal strikes or medium hard onsets and offsets can help avoid this when doing vocal weight exercises.
Gender perception of vocal weight
- Low vocal weight ➡️ ♀️ more feminine
- High vocal weight ➡️ ♂️ more masculine
There are however, many female voices with medium or even heavy vocal weight relative to typical feminine levels. Some examples include imawonder and 39daph. The important thing that makes this possible is most likely microbehaviours and potentially different ways/mechanisms of affecting the perception of vocal weight.
Even though it’s possible to have a feminine voice with medium or high vocal weight and even at a low pitch, it’s extremely difficult until we have more control.
Generalisations about vocal weight
These are very much generalisations and might not be accurate in everyone’s case. Generally, vocal weight requires more air pressure, but not flow rate.
- When getting louder I drop in pitch and/or don’t add air - heavier weight
- When getting louder I raise in pitch and add air - lighter weight
Loudness vs vocal weight
A lot of people conflate the volume of our speech with vocal weight. Vocal weight is louder, but that doesn’t mean all loud things are high in vocal weight. Yelling or shouting (rather than just speaking loudly) typically induces three things:
- raise in pitch
- increased airflow (and increased closure to balance)
- increased vocal weight
These can be isolated or removed from the equation. You can get loud without going up in pitch, or without increasing airflow or any combination. Some people go quiet when trying to achieve low vocal weight and then never learn control over it properly. It’s important to ‘stretch’ in every direction (within reason) and to avoid relying on something for our voice to work!