CHRISTMAS STREAM HAPPENING TODAY! ~3pm pacific! Our 5th Annual one! <3 Hope to see you there.
Update: Gonna move stream to New Years Eve. I spent most of the day trying to get my stream ready and ultimately found I didnât have the cables needed cause this is a new setup. Spent so long trying I gave up and decided to just spend what's left of the evening with my loved ones. âĽ
New Years Stream will be our big stream instead. Sorry to keep anyone waiting!
Is Voice Learning Hard?
Voice learning appears hard to beginners because the voice is an internal black box. The moment we try to describe or explain, âhowâ something is done vocally, we have now externalized it and, thus, it has become abstracted and lower fidelity.
The true driver of vocal growth is an internal feedback loop which forms when we are speaking the ânative languageâ of our vocal motor processing.
What can be challenging to fully communicate is that the ânative languageâ of our vocal motor learning is not one of conscious thought, abstract ideas, theory, or acoustics but instead, effect oriented direct action.
What does âactionâ with voice mean? Well, how do we know we are doing something ârightâ vocally? How do we know who is a âgreatâ singer? The sound! Most individuals who struggle in voice get stuck here because âhearingâ something can mean a lot of different things. Far too often beginners think when we say âlisten carefullyâ that means they should be consciously dialoging about the sound while it happens instead of simply observing and taking in the experience. Everything we need to hear to achieve our vocal goals, we can ALREADY hear. We learn more âtechnicalâ names like weight, pitch, clarity, etc. because these allow for shared communication to map onto direct sensation and experience of important sound patterns.
If we arenât cognitively âinteractingâ with the sound properly, the motor skills will delay and be slow to form as the motor skills form by reacting and micro adjusting against âexpectation vs realityâ as we listen.
Voice learning, then, appears difficult on the surface because our intuition tells us we need to do something âspecificâ or âlinearâ or we need to be manually trying to move muscles around or we need to be recording ourselves and listening back instead of listening in real time, etc, we need to be doing certain exercises. All of these seem like theyâd help a lot (and they can to be fair) but they primarily just displace vocal learning more further from the source.
You already learned how to speak an entire complex language as a child without trying to manually "learn" the language! That is because the essence of voice learning lives in interactive play and familiarity with sound. From the moment you are born, your little baby brain is collecting and keeping score of sounds. After a certain exposure window, the sounds which are most common and have the most "tallied score" work as auditory targets to which we vocalize at. As we miss the targets, overcorrect, under correct, or get closer, our "auditory target" acts like a point of desired relativity to form an unconscious, constantly updating feedback loop which automatically "judges" and organizes our seemingly "blind" actions into something meaningful as motor adjustment occurs in reaction until the distance from the auditory object reduces, "muh" turns into "mah" turns into "mahmah" turns into "momma" turns into "mom".
Trying to learn voice outside of this process we already have done by overthinking it, overmanaging it, etc. is like marching out of step or dancing off beat from the "source" of vocal learning.
It has been 18 months since we launched our tracheal shave vocal risk community survey! In that time, 161 respondents provided data about their experience with this procedure. We will be releasing a video this week going over all the data! In the meantime while that's being edited, I'll be posting some results from the survey. I'll start with one of the most important questions:
1) When asked, "Do you experience any chronic or long term vocal impairment following the surgery?"
- 62.7%, No
- 26.1% Yes
- 11.2% Possibly but Unsure
This is a much higher impairment rate than what appears in the limited data published on the topic. Additionally, within the trans community, the communicated vocal risks of a tracheal shave are often considered to be low to none. Even in the actual published data on this, the vocal impairment rate is literally 1% or lower. For example, these two studies report not having a single case of long term vocal impairment in their data sets:
study with a sample size of 114 - not a single respondent reported long term vocal impairment:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6250475/
Dr. Spiegel studying identifying a key vocal risk but reports 0/31 samples having long term vocal impairment:
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaotolaryngology/fullarâŚ
While the sample size and potential sampling bias of our survey limit the ability to draw a strong conclusion, it's quite clear even if the risk suggested in our data is artificially elevated, even by several times, from sample bias, it suggests a significantly higher risk rate than current data in publication (which all have much lower sample size than our survey btw!) would suggest.
Definitely don't want to doom and gloom with this though! The overwhelming majority of our respondents who had this surgery found it effective in alleviating dysphoria and would have chosen the surgery again knowing the outcome. However, it's important to make the risks known. This is especially concerning because 1/3rd of respondents reported not being informed of any potential long term vocal risk whatsoever. Will follow up with another post on this tomorrow. Compiling all this into a paper of sorts slowly!
Hi there! Our next group class kicks off in 2 days. A generous donor has granted us the ability to offer a scholarship slot for a student in need for this class (and several others coming up). This semester, we will be opening submissions for ~24 hours. Please double check ahead of time that you can attend the class time before submitting (12 classes from Feb 12th to April 30th): www.transvoicelessons.com/group
Scholarship Requirements:
Core Goal: Provide access to quality voice training for a transperson in need. Need can be defined across many axes: financial barriers, political barriers, social barriers, physical barriers, and the deep interaction between these gates. We will do our absolute best to select for harm reduction, beneficence, and justice. In order to submit an application at this time, please follow the steps below:
0) Name, e-mail, basic contact info, timezone/location
1) Statement of Need: write to us honestly about your current situation: issues, constraints, barriers of access you're facing (less than 300 words)
2) Statement of Benefit: write to us honestly about how this scholarship will impact or influence your current situation (less than 250 words)
3) Email Support@TransVoiceLessons.com with the subject "Scholarship - Name"
Roughly 24 hours after, we will select a recipient.
We will be providing more scholarship opportunities in the future and for a broader diversity of programs. Thanks!
Happy New Year, angels! Thank you so much for the support over the years. May we all find peace, prosperity, and good health in 2023. Here are a few updates!
1) There are only 4 remaining slots for our January 2023 12-week Vocal Group Course. Join soon if you'd like to be included!: www.transvoicelessons.com/group
2) There will be a new long form video dropping on this channel this week! It's the first bigger voice video in awhile. I hope you all enjoy it. Both Skap (editor) and I, have been hard at work trying to organize the content pipeline to more regularly release stuff. I've been talking about this for like 2 years at this point and have had a hard time materializing more frequent releases but recently began medication for ADHD that is helping a lot. Hope to show these improvements for you all soon.
3) MERCH DROP: Heatfromfire.com, cop a heatfromfire hoodie if you wish
4) New Jazz Album Out: zheaerosemusic.bandcamp.com/
4TH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS LIVE STREAM: Be there or be rhomboidal!
Lot's of exciting things to share and announce. ;3
Show yourself love and celebrate the steps you've made in finding your voice even if you haven't reached your goal yet. I'm proud of you. <3
Hi angels~!! It's time for another channel update! Here are 5 important updates!
1) GROUP CLASSES: We are running out of slots for our next group class. We have also added the option for payment plans for the group classes! Link to enroll: www.transvoicelessons.com/group
2) GROWING: The team has been growing slowly but surely. I am currently accepting applications for video producers in Los Angeles. If you'd like to work together on this channel, please E-mail some of your work to TransVoiceLessons@gmail.com
3) NEW TEACHER: We have a new teacher at TVL now -- Vivienne! We will do a more formal introduction on this channel and she may even make some videos at some point but for now let's all give her some love <3 shes amazing and I'm proud to work with her.
4) MOVING: Holy cow, I decided to move to LA and the last 2 months of my life have been consumed with this crushing process. I haven't had any of my belongings in weeks. I got sick twice too cause apparently my immune system sucks. I also learned credit matters (I have no credit history). I finally moved in on Monday but all of my possessions are still in transit.
5) MERCH: I know I said I'd release the merch awhile ago. It's basically done but I need to make a few tweaks to the items after ordering them and seeing how it turned out. One of the designs ended up a little blurry and the other needed a font change. It's better to release during the fall anyways cause it was always intended as a fall/winter release! I'm gonna do a little model shoot with them then drop it!
WE HIT 100K and PRESENTED AT GOOGLE in the same week!! I seriously can't thank you all enough. This week has been full of milestones beyond what I ever imagined possible. So thank you all from the the bottom of my heart. <3
I'm going to be moving soon and building a video production team with the plan to make consistent, high quality content. I know I've always been saying, "I'll try to be more consistent" with my uploads but this time I really mean it. I'm working towards it and have accepted that I can't do it all by myself and I really need an amazing team. If you live in LA, work in media/content, and are interested in being hired to work on this channel, reach out via e-mail please!
love y'all sm <3
Livestream Event: World renowned and innovative otolaryngologist, Dr. James Thomas will be joining me live on July 7th at 5pm EST to discuss gender affirming vocal surgery, tracheal shave, limitations, risks, considerations, anatomy, and the future of voice surgery.
Donât miss it! Bring any question you've ever had about vocal surgery, voice training, anatomy, or the future of voice science!
hi.
i love sound so much.
i worship audio in all forms.
i use my passion and love of sound to help my fellow trans and GNC individuals.