Introduction- This blog has been a place where I have mostly posted about small windows into the world of voice training. However, I have barely dipped my toe into actual training. This is where I needed some help with my journey, so I asked vocal pedagogy professor and voice teacher at Troy University, Dr. Sarah Wee, about the trans voice and how to jump into training.
Question 1: What are some thoughts and ideas you can pass on to me, as somebody who has researched it more and who knows more about the voice than I do?
Answer:
It’s important to make sure, as you would in normal life, that you constantly treat them in the identity that they want to be treated as. So, if you’re teaching someone that is now trans female, even if they have a low male voice, you have to be really cautious to not say words like “male” or “bass-“ “bass” is something they kind of want to get away from- or even “tenor.” You start to use terms like “soprano” and “mezzo” even though you’re probably talking down the octave, if not two octaves.
Also being very careful with repertoire because you want to give them in the beginning, at least, repertoire that identified romantically the way they identify. So you may not want it to be a Don Giovanni type character that is this swarthy male pursuing a woman if that’s not where this person feels right.
Folk songs are really great. Things that use words like “sweetheart” and “love” instead of specific “him” or “hers.” Opera is almost impossible to find something that can go either way. So unless you have someone that is very established in their new life and very secure, which doesn’t often happen in the beginning, you want to be really cautious of picking things that will align with the gender they currently identify with and not lead them to feel the way they did before.
Question 2: How would you go about, in a healthy way, teaching someone to reach their higher register?
Answer:
Things like sirens are great. Lip trills are great because you cannot hurt yourself if you’re doing a lip trill. It doesn’t matter what you do, you physically cannot hurt your vocal folds if you’re doing a lip trill. And in falsetto, it’s all excess air, so, in the beginning, making sure it’s a “hhoo” with lots of h beforehand, that will help them get higher. If you just really let that excess air, it’s going to force the vocal folds apart, which helps it stretch to that upper whistle register.
Lip trills are one of the biggest things, though, because then you get the brain wrapped around it. The brain goes, “Oh, I can sing that note. I can make noise on that note.” And then you work from there.
And then I’ll do a lot of taking things up the octave, so having them really comfortable with something, then “Well, let’s just see what happens. You’re going to crack, it’s going to sound awful, it’ll sound awful when I do it, too.” And just trying to get the confidence level there. That’s why a lot of times, I think the best falsetto work is often in choirs because you have safety in numbers, and everybody’s making silly noises.
Question 3: I would like to ask about the other end of the spectrum, about taking a range down in a healthy way.
Answer:
That’s a little harder because it’s not this “third voice” that everyone has, so a lot of it ends up being vowel choice. So doing things that are brighter vowels, exercises that have an “aa (as in cat),” you’re going to sit into that chesty sound more. Just taking a soprano down to a mezzo, even if we don’t consider the trans aspect of it, just having them place their hand on their chest to really feel the vibrations and embracing what that feels like to have that low chest sound.
Belting in the beginning can be really helpful because it is that brighter sound. And then the same thing, lip trills and sirens in the other direction and really letting them bottom out and just feel what that feels like to hit the bottom of their voice and get comfortable.
Conclusion- While this interview gave me the insight I needed to start training voices, I still have a long way to go before I can call myself a master. Hopefully, with time, practice, and a lot more research, I can, as Dr. Wee does, make voices feel beautiful.
*Pictures to be added soon
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