Quick Tips to Fem Your Voice!
yesterday, April 17th, marked my one year anniversary since starting hormone replacement therapy. (cue the party poppers! 🎉)
while I didn’t make a huge thing of it, and mostly forgot about it until having a conversation with a friend, I’m very grateful to have started. it’s something I’d always wanted to do since realizing my assigned gender didn’t fit me. so thankfully, I finally went through with it!
one other thing I’d been putting off for years was voice training, and funnily enough, I was able to begin lessons for it within the same few weeks I’d started taking hormones. I bring all this up to say that I’ve only been living with my “new” voice for a relatively short time. voice training is really intimidating, but it’s also not nearly as bad as I thought it’d be, and you can get actual results pretty quickly.
and so I’d like to help share some things about feminizing your voice that would maybe help other transfemmes with voice training! I’ve also heard some concerning misconceptions about it, so I’m also writing this blog post to help give some tips for safer voice training.
”Okay, but who are you?”
fair question! I am former student of Seattle Voice Labs, a prominent organization for instruction and innovation for trans vocal training. however, I am not a qualified instructor. my goal here is share to broad tips and fundamental concepts that may help with voice feminization. I highly encourage seeking lessons if you are in a position to do so, and even if you’re not, Seattle Voice Labs does have a limited number of scholarships!
for full transparency, let me share where I started with my voice before I realized I was non-binary, and where it is today.
My “before” voice
during 2019, mere months before having a Gender Crisis™, I took an online computer ethics class over the summer, so I have a few recordings I made during that time. here is a short snippet from one of them:
oof, let’s hope I don’t regret posting that.
My “after” voice
today, in 2026, I feel much more happy with my voice. my goal was to have a voice that is feminine-leaning but androgynous. here is a short snippet from my most recent youtube video:
aaahh! much better! much more me :)
“Get to the tips already!”
okay okay, sheesh! here’s a few general tips for feminizing your voice. these aren’t exhaustive by any means, and they are no substitute for lessons with a qualified instructor, but if you want to DIY it, then I would recommend keeping these things in mind.
IT SHOULD NOT HURT
I REPEAT: VOICE TRAINING SHOULD NEVER HURT!!!
I had no idea this was a misconception until one of my friends had mentioned it. alarm bells went off instantly. this was drilled into me by my instructor with SVL when I first started, and it was brought up constantly.
if it hurts, STOP.
if you’re fatigued, STOP and rest.
voice training is about retraining your muscle memory, not about forcing your throat and tongue to do what you want. if you try to force it, you may get hurt and damage your voice. the best approach is to take it slow and steady. your mouth and tongue will be doing new things, and your muscles may need to build up in other areas, so being gentle with yourself is the way to go. work in small sessions, maybe 15 minutes a day, and stop when you start to feel fatigued. your muscles in this area are small and sensitive, so they need to be handled slowly and carefully.
seriously. this is incredibly important. if there was one tip to take away from this blog post, it’s this one.
okay, scary part out of the way.
Record yourself (I know, I’m sorry)
this is more important than you realize. the reason you don’t like your recorded voice is because it sounds different than what you hear in your head!
firstly, if I were to guess, your goal is to change your voice in part because of how those around you hear it. so of course you need to hear what others are hearing!
secondly, listening back to your recordings is a way of objectively knowing what went right and what went wrong during a practice session. what parts you need to work on, or what parts went well! it’s more helpful than it seems, and I promise it’s not that bad and maybe kind of normal after a while.
Breath control
a subtle difference between masculine and feminine voices is the amount of breath used when speaking. masculine voices tend to use less air, and feminine voices tend to use more air.
I found this pretty surprising when I learned it, because most of the feminine voices I can think of don’t sound “breathy,” so what gives?
that’s part of voice training! it’s finding a new baseline of air, since I think most folks who want to feminize their voice need to use more air when speaking. and also, what sounds “breathy” in your head might not actually sound that breathy in reality. this is one reason recording yourself is so important.
so in general, experiment with using more air when speaking! I’d recommend doing some deep breathing exercises, or speaking with a super airy voice during practice to get used to more air passing through your vocal folds. if that’s the case (which it likely is), then take it slow and stay hydrated! it might feel silly in the moment, but it’s just like any other exercise.
Mouth space (AKA Resonance)
“resonance” is maybe the most daunting-feeling term in voice training, and it’s also likely the most focused-on part. this is because it is genuinely the most impactful part of how a voice sounds acoustically!
putting it in simpler terms, the goal with voice feminization is reducing the amount of space in your mouth and throat for sound waves to bounce around before coming out as your voice. more space leads to a deeper sounding voice, and less space leads to a lighter sounding voice.
now, reason #2 I made this blog post is because in online spaces there’s a lot of focus put on raising the larynx, or voice box. I’ve learned that this is a misconception. a raised larynx is a consequence of reducing resonating space, not the main goal! when I tried focusing on this while DIY-ing it, there was a lot of unnecessary strain and discomfort. this is not good! recall tip number 1!
because the throat and tongue (mostly) use the same muscles, you should focus on using your tongue alone to reduce resonating space in your mouth and throat. focus on keeping your tongue “fat and happy” in your mouth, to reduce as much space in the back, then middle, then front of your mouth as possible. this is where voice training gets hard, I think, because you essentially have to relearn how to speak this way. it’s hard, but it is doable! it just takes time. and again, you should not be straining to do it!
while practicing, I recommend reading off of the rainbow passage, since it’s a relatively short passage that contains a ton of different phonetic sounds. (this is what I used during my lessons.)
Play and have fun!
there’s plenty more technical things I could to say, but I think I’ll wrap it up here. one final key thing to remember is that this is your voice, so it’s important to make it your own!
it’s worth playing around with different ways of speaking. such as picking out celebrities you’d like to sound like and mimicking them. record yourself to learn what you do and don’t like. playing and having fun is important because it lets you experiment with your new muscle memory and new techniques you’re picking up.
you’ll get to the point of wowing yourself, listening back to a recording and thinking “wait, that’s me?” and you’ll be wowed even more after listening to recordings from weeks and months ago!
voice training is a very personal thing, and so it’s important to keep morale up. if you feel like you’re not making any progress, try doing something different. you could revisit breath control, or you could work on mimicking someone’s inflection, or you could work on your consonants and diction. there’s so much that goes in to speaking, and so you’ll never really run out of areas to work on. and that’s a good thing!
You got this!
voice training was one of the best decisions I’ve made for my gender expression, and if it’s something you want to do as well, then know that you can do it. training your voice is withing your reach, even if professional lessons aren’t in the cards. as long as you’re doing it safely and have fun, then your new voice will be here in no time. :)
I know this has been a lot of info, so my email is always open for any questions or clarifications!
