Trans Voice Literature Review №1
This entry is an annotated bibliography / literature review for some academic articles I read yesterday and today. Let's ponder resonance?
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Kawitzky, D., & McAllister, T. (2020). The effect of formant biofeedback on the feminization of voice in transgender women. Journal of Voice, 34(1), 53–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2018.07.017
TL;DR: One week of training? Participants successfully raised their F2 when given visual-acoustic biofeedback and informed that lip shape and tongue position could help. However, F2 alone only slightly contributes to gendered perception of voice; F0 and F2 must jointly be raised to affect overal gendered perception of voice. F1 and F3 do not meaningfully contribute to voice gendering.
Excerpts from the Methods/Procedure section: Clopper et al (2005) The Target F2 was calculated as the speaker's baseline F2 plus the product of the mean F2 provided by Clopper et al (2005) by the scale factor from Fant (1975) (Page 11). Sources 1.a and 1.b contribute to the chart following their citation.
"Participants were informed of two strategies that they might use to manipulate the location of the peak [for F2]: (a) changing the position of the tongue in the mouth (i.e. front or back), and (b) changing the shape of the lips (i.e. rounded or unrounded). Both groups were informed that altering pitch is not the preferred way to change the location of the peak," (page 13). Additionally, "once either the participants were satisfied with their manipulation of the second formant to reach the target or three minutes had expired, they were instructed to produce the target word ... for eight consecutive trials while matching the target as closely as possible," (page 14).
Review: On paper, this feels like a foolproof way to train up F2. In practice, you likely need some specialty software or equipment to render a realtime spectrogram and display a target frequency. Worth considering as I ponder my options. Additionally, this is only a small part of the puzzle. F0 looms overhead, as F2 alone can't do much for gender perception.
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Hillenbrand J, Getty LA, Clark MJ, & Wheeler K. (1995). Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America; 97:3099–3111. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.411872
TD;DR: I'm using this as a replacement for Clopper et al (2005). Although I still had to pull the formant Hz from a chart, it was fairly straightforward for this one. (Figures five and six.)
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Fant, G. (1975). Non-uniform vowel normalization. Speech Transmission Laboratories Quarterly Progress & Status Report, 16(2-3): p. 1-19.
TL;DR: K2. (Table I-A-I.)
Phoneme Fem F2 (Hz) Masc F2 (Hz) Scale Factor K2 Fem/Masc - 1 /i/ 2750 2300 21% 20% /ɪ/ 2350 2050 22% 15% /æ/ 2350 1950 17% 21% /ɛ/ 2050 1800 18% 14% /ɑ/ 1550 1300 12% 19% /ɔ/ 1150 1000 6% 15% /ʊ/ 1200 1100 12% 9% /u/ 1100 1000 1% 10% /ʌ/ 1400 1200 18% 17% /ɝ/ 1600 1400 21% 14% -
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Carew, L., Dacakis, G., & Oates, J. (2007). The effectiveness of oral resonance therapy on the perception of femininity of voice in male-to-female transsexuals. Journal of Voice, 21(5), 591–603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2006.05.005
TL;DR: Five weeks of training. This article, much like the prior, teaches forward tongue carriange and lip spreading to raise resonance. Three out of nine participants were rated mostly feminine after treatment, while most remained below the threshold of androgyny despite improvements. Mirrors the findings of Kawitzky et al. that F2 alone has a minor affect on gender perception in voice.
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Leyns, C., Daelman, J., Adriaansen, A., Tomassen, P., Morsomme, D., T'Sjoen, G., & D'haeseleer, E. (2023). Short-Term Acoustic Effects of Speech Therapy in Transgender Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial, American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, vol. 32, pp. 145-168. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_AJSLP-22-00135
TL;DR: 14 weeks of training. Pitch Elevation Training (PET) and Articulation-Resonance Training (ART) increased F0, F1, F2, and F3. Participants were not rated, so unclear efficacy.
Results excerpt (Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4): For F0: under PET went up by ~40Hz, under ART went up by ~25Hz, under both PET and ART went up by ~50Hz. For F2 of /ɑ/: under PET went up by 75Hz, under ART went up by 90Hz, under both PET and ART went up by 113Hz.
PET procedure (Appendix B.1): Glissando patterns with biofeedback via nasal consonants (target F0 up by 160Hz), Glissando patterns as before but with CVC, introduction of Voice Pitch Analyzer smartphone app for home exercises; repetition of glissando patterns, counting from one to ten from old F0 to new F0, gliding from old to new pitch within a word; abbreviated glissando pattern, speaking at the new pitch with upward intonation patterns (short expressions and building up to sentences, poems, texts); bubble phonation; straw phonation.
ART procedure (Appendix B.2): Lip spreading (alternating between /u/ and /i/, then /e/ and /y/, then consonant + /i/ to consonant + /e/, then consonant + /u/ to consonant + /y/, then monosyllable words with /i/ /e/ /u/ /y/, then multisyllable, then sentences, then text, then spontaneous speech); repetition of lip spreading, introduction of forward tongue position (moving tongue from front to back when producing vowels, /i/ with forward and high back, /i/ and gliding to other vowels, trying to reach forward and high back, words with /i/ /y/ /a/, sentences, texts, spontaneous speech); repetition of forward tongue position, introduction to larynx elevation through twang (yawning = downward movement of larynx, swallowing = upward movement of larynx, listening to twang exampes [baby crying, goat sounds], adding twang to /a/, decreasing twang to /a/, add consonants, words, sentences, texts, spontaneous speech); Repetition of larynx elevation, introduction to forward resonance (discrimination between chest and head resonance using /o/ vowel, covering nostrils and saying "hmmm", nasal consonant /m/ + vowel, words with initial /m/, with head comfortably against a wall make "nnn" sound via tongue on hard palate and glissando, repeat previous but put back part of tongue on soft palate making "ng" sound and glissando [the head-on-wall part makes the resonances easier to feel]), introduction to clear speech (pronounce combinations of consonants and vowels clearly and precisely starting slow and getting fast, cork exercise [using a cork with diameter 23mm and length 45mm place it bet ween front teeth and read words out loud with precise articulation movements], spontaneous speech.); repetition of all techniques.
Review: This article is packed with techniques that can affect both F0 and F2, our key features of feminine speech. However, the frequency increases seem a bit smaller than needed, and the participants were not rated at all so we have no way of knowing how effective the increased F0 and F2 were in practice. We see our friend Bubble phonation show up under PET, which is interesting. It might be worth picking out a few of these to experiment with going forward.
If anything, this post taught me that I miss academia. I'm still in the research/experiment phase for this voice thing so I'll likely publish a few more lit review adjacent posts yet, but it's a start! I need to get in and try these exercises.