Feminising or masculinising your voice: what physiology says, what vocal technique does

Two requests come up regularly, in the studio as in consultation: a man who would like a more feminine voice, a woman who would like a more masculine voice. They sometimes arrive as part of a transition, sometimes for a reason of stage, of character, of profession, sometimes simply because the speaking voice bothers the person who carries it. The possible answers fall into two families: what belongs to a doctor, and what can be worked on with a vocal technique teacher.

Adeline Toniutti put the fundamental question to Dr Marie Mailly, an ENT specialising in the voice in Paris: does the femininity or masculinity of a voice come from the vocal folds, or from a way of speaking? And do the resonators have anything to do with it? From her answers follows a working method, which along the way puts back in their place three words we use without always defining them: M1 (chest voice), M2 (head voice), resonators.

The medical and surgical procedures of gender transition belong to specialised ENT and phoniatric teams, who receive these requests regularly.

The resonators are the cavities located above the vocal folds: the larynx itself, the pharynx, the oral cavity, the nasal cavities, the whole of the vocal tract. The vocal folds produce a sound; the resonators filter it, amplify some of its components and attenuate others. They are what gives the timbre its breadth, its richness, its colour.

Adeline Toniutti had her own opinion on the matter, and asked Dr Mailly for hers: is a man’s resonator ultimately different from a woman’s?

It is a precious answer for anyone who wants to shift the gender of their voice, because it shows where not to look. The resonators decide the timbre, its breadth and its richness, and their volume remains that of the body: you do not get the crystal clarity of a child’s voice on an adult vocal tract, and you do not make the breadth of an adult voice with a child’s tract. But they are not what makes a voice heard as feminine or masculine. The lever is elsewhere: in the average pitch, to some extent, and above all in prosody.

This is the most practical point, and the most counter-intuitive for anyone who thinks everything rests on pitch. Dr Mailly says it in one sentence: at an equivalent frequency, there is a prosody, a musicality, that makes a voice sound more feminine than masculine. So the markers have to be identified, before they are produced.

Adeline Toniutti has been working on these markers for a long time, in a completely different context: pop.

She adds that these idioms are not only gendered. They are also social and geographical. There is a more urban way of singing French, a Québécois way, a Franco-American way, a retro way, and each carries with it its rhythm, its accents and its vowels. She described them in The ways of singing French. A singer who knows how to move from one idiom to another has already learnt the gesture asked of someone who wants to shift the gender of their voice: identify markers, isolate them, install them.

One last parameter, a technical one this time: the amount of air. Adeline Toniutti points out that speaking with a lower voice requires putting in a little more air. It is a setting that can be worked on and that must be watched, because a voice that is pushed down by force tires quickly.

The fundamental question remains. Is the voice a marker of gender? In the great majority of cases, yes: we rarely hesitate when hearing someone sing. This classification rests both on material, the mass and length of the vocal folds, and on behaviour, the chosen pitch and the prosody. The first level belongs to biology. The second can be worked on.

This work is that of a vocal technique teacher. It works alongside medical follow-up and does not replace it. The division is simple.

Dr Marie Mailly’s answers do not constitute personalised medical advice. For any question about your voice, consult a phoniatrician or an ENT.