#vocal changes

It’s perfectly believable for that to be the case, but it’s also perfectly believable for that not to be the case. I speak with the same cadence, with the same accent and general habits that I did before testosterone, my voice is just deeper now. But I have a really individual way of speaking and kind of have to alter my speech around people not from my area in order to be better understood. 

If somebody has a distinctive accent, and/or uses specific slang, or ways of structuring sentences, someone who is trained in voice recognition could probably figure it out. Same for someone who is in the trans community who is possibly subconsciously on the lookout for others like us. Those folks might find it easier to recognize a certain voice as being from the same person.

With regards to ‘somewhere along the transition’: generally, voices that deepen, do so slowly. It’s kind of a growth spurt, but for your vocal chords. It’s not something that changes overnight, generally. And if it does change overnight, it doesn’t do so to its full capacity. Voices deepen over time.

Something that might help you would be to check out YouTube for voice timelines that people have uploaded. Here’s a link to what comes up when I search ‘testosterone voice timeline’. 

transition is totally weird.  it’s good weird but it takes a whole lot of adjusting.  Also, it’s a little weird for people to be just talking about you and it can be pretty rude depending on how that’s happening.  It’s okay if not everything feels like it’s smooth and easy, this whole thing is a very messy process - it’s puberty at hyperspeed! 

Hey there! Thanks so much for your patience!!

It is definitelypossible to experience vocal changes after being trapped in a burning building.Part of the reason smoke inhalation is so dangerous is that the air can behundreds of degrees even in parts of the building that aren’t on fire, andinhalation burns are a very real possibility even in those with no physicalburns.

As the air passes down the trachea and into the windpipe, ithas to bass through the vocal cords, which would then be affected by the heat.

Please understand that this would have hurt like hell, andthe pain itself might leave some psychological trauma. In addition, they mayhave sustained some injury to the lungs or the airway itself in addition todamage to the cords.

It’s a great piece of background for a character!

Best of all the luck!

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

disclaimer    

sounds like that 3 weeks thing was a fluke, possibly a cold or something.  it’s really, really unusual for your voice to drop that quickly as a function of T because of the way T makes your voice drop: it makes your vocal cords grow.  it’s also why it can’t make your vocal cords un-grow, so your voice doesn’t go back when you go off T (and why trans women and nonbinary femme voices don’t go up when they start estrogen).  We’ve answered a lot of voice questions lately, but in case you missed it, the typical timeline for voice changes STARTS between 3 and 12 months, and continues for about 1-2 years. 

i can’t say how you might experience transition, but without any visual cues, people generally tend to take people at their word: there’s no reason to doubt that this voice is Monsieur Smith even if it sounds a little high pitched, because men can have higher-pitched voices, just like women can have lower-pitched voices.  There is some fluctuation as voices change (the same way teen boys get voice cracking) but overall you don’t jump back and forth between “girl” and “boy” voice- it’s just pitchy the same way teen boys are.  (i always laughed it off “i guess i’m having puberty” when it happened in public, and the concept of a 20something “in puberty” was so absurd to cis people that they laughed with me and nobody questioned it- i guess they just assumed i was sick.  Side note: my cis coworker gets occasional voice cracks and he’s in his early 30s so sometimes that just happens to guys).  Generally, voice changes don’t really get going until 3+ months on T, so you can likely expect some more dropping after that point.  

the only thing i can think of is to do the same type of training you would for vocal training for singing or talking.  

the way i trained myself to be able to reach lower registers, i talked normally, then repeated the same phrase a little lower, then a little lower, and a little lower until it was so low i was croaking it.  i did this over and over until the lowest lows got easier.   Similarly, if you are screaming (lyrics or just excitedly), go somewhere you can just scream, and scream but intentionally drop the pitch like you’re trying to sing a lower note,  then with the next breath, drop it a little lower, and repeat that over and over again.  with time, it should be more easy/natural to pick it up in the lower ranges instead of the higher ranges.