It's commonly known that pitch is fundamental when it comes to FTM Trans Voice Training, but did you know that certain factors such as lip articulation and enunciation play a very large role when it comes to lowering pitch? Without getting too technical, pitch is simply the frequency at which the vocal folds vibrate—a manifestation of their length, tension, and mass. The natural pitch range of males by the age of 21 is between 80Hz - 160Hz [1].

It’s critical to keep in mind that in regards to the perception of male voice: a low pitched voice doesn’t necessarily equate to an authentically sounding male voice but instead only gets us half way there. The real key to achieving an authentic sounding male pitch is through the limitation of pitch variation [2]. Women tend to speak with a high degree of pitch variation which basically means their pitch goes up and down, up and down, instead of just staying consistent. With this understanding, in order to achieve an authentically male sounding pitch we’ll need to both decrease our pitch as well as use strategies to ensure the pitch stays flat and has little variation.

Before getting into the exercises, we need to first understand that much of our pitch in conversation will be influenced by stress and emotion which arise from various life events. With this in mind, if you’re choosing to practice while speaking lines or reading text that engages any sort of emotional response, it will become increasingly difficult to keep the pitch variation to a minimum. Due to this, I recommend to clients to practice using lines or text that are overall static and boring so as to ensure an easier time practicing these skills. Later on, however, once you’ve mastered this, try utilizing more emotional texts to practice and continue to challenge yourself to keep your pitch variation low. As I stated previously, pitch is heavily influenced by lip articulation and enunciation. To see what I mean, go to a mirror and say the words “1,2,3,4” and watch to see just how much your lips move. Now try it again while trying to keep your lip movement to a minimum, one way that can envision this is through imagining you have a stiff upper lip that restricts the movement. After doing this exercise I guarantee you’ll have noticed how much lower your pitch drops once you begin to articulate your lips less. Furthermore, once your lip articulation is reduced you will also notice so does your ability to enunciate words and they’ll start to sound increasingly muddled together. It’s up to you to fine tune what combination of these two factors suits you and your voice goals best. Pitch is just one of the many factors that contribute to creating an authentic sounding male voice and they all take time, patience and dedication to mastering, don’t forget to celebrate the little wins and every now and again take a look at how far you’ve come. If at any point you feel like you could benefit from the direction of a Trans Voice Training Teacher feel free to reach out to me through my website at https://www.voicebykylie.com/ and as always I wish you all the best in your voice training journey.

[1] Fouquet M, Pisanski K, Mathevon N, Reby D. Seven and up: individual differences in male voice fundamental frequency emerge before puberty and remain stable throughout adulthood. R Soc Open Sci. 2016 Oct 5;3(10):160395. doi: 10.1098/rsos.160395. PMID: 27853555; PMCID: PMC5098980.

[2] Körner, Anita & Strack, Fritz. (2023). Articulation posture influences pitch during singing imagery. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 10.3758/s13423-023-02306-1.