Yay! Happy hormoniversary to me.
It's a special #TransVoiceFriday as I add an audio clip to my recent entries of #HowToGirl where I've been writing about what I've learned in five years of hormone therapy for gender transition.
#transvoicefriday
It's a #TransTimeline #TransVoiceFriday! A recording from June last year spliced with one from just now.
I have to say that for 12 months of not very dedicated work, I'm a bit underwhelmed, but at least I've not gone backward.
Different mics, so it's not entirely a fair comparison, but I was at least equally self-conscious on both occasions.
Because @miriamrobern has stepped up to the plate with an utterly enchanting #TransVoiceFriday, I feel obliged to provide some fingernails-down-a-blackboard contrast.
This is an excerpt from a 14th century poem that @tillybridges read on her podcast over a year ago, which she in turn got from @TheRaDR
I've tried to record it multiple times, but on the first couple of takes I burst into tears and after that my voice is gone. This time is no exception. Enjoy.
What's this, a super late submission to #TransVoiceFriday? It's been a while, folks, but for reasons I can't quite explain I decided to record myself reading one of my favourite poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot.
This poem is eggy as fuck, just sayin.
I often quote snippets of this poem in everyday life. Nobody gets the reference, and that's okay.
It is an early access game, so I'm sure there's gonna be balancing... But this is a hilariously broken build in 9 Kings; King of Greed with dispenser.
I mean, it's just basic gameplay of the Greed King; nearly impossible to not play this way.
Edit: I like my voice here - even if I start cackle-giggling - so adding some hashtags.
Without claiming that there aren’t obvious things to improve or that it is “finished”, I just decided that the current version of my “Free 🏳️⚧️ Voice Training”-software (FTVT) is ready for a 2.0.0 release:
You can find my instance of it here.
This version is essentially an improvement over what was there before in just about every way:
First of all, it actually has a version-number! The reason this is version 2.0.0 and not 1.0.0 is simply that the older version of the software was for so long in actual use that calling it anything less than 1.0 would feel wrong, but there were also significant enough changes to make this a major release. That’s why it is 2.0.
On the user-facing side the most obvious change is the massively improved design. Just compare the version on the flagship-instance with the older version that is for now still available here.
But that’s not the only thing: There is now explicit support for this to be installed as a progressive web app (PWA), which makes it almost like a normal app on mobile devices. In particular this also means that it is now much easier to use it offline: While it was always intentionally possible to download the files and open the entire thing via file:///…, installing a PWA might be a bit easier on mobile, improving the accessibility. (It might also allow to add it to fdroid, I’ll see about that at a later point in time).
Now, a PWA of course has the issue that it leaves traces in the browser, but it may reduces traces left on the web, and if you don’t religiously clean your browsing history anyways, it’s possible to see where you were if you get access to it, so it’s not too bad of a trade-off.
Speaking of traces: It’s now possible to store settings in the local storage of the browser. So far this is largely inconsequential, but for a future version I want to add the ability to store the recordings as well! Of course all of that is strictly opt-in. If you don’t do anything the app won’t leave any traces on your browser that your browser doesn’t create anyways.
That said, there are also significant improvements on the software-side of things: Not only did I improve the quality of the code-base by a lot (still not great though!), I also replaced most of the previous super-sketchy build-system with something slightly less so to the point where others might even be interested in having a look at it: esbuild for bundling, currently run by makefiles. I still refuse to let most other javascript-code near it, but esbuild seems established enough for me to be willing to risk using it.
So, if you need a voice-recorder that is specifically made for trans voice training and puts a huge focus on user privacy, give it a try, for example on the next #TransVoiceFriday! 😊
#trans #transgender #voicetraining #transvoicetraining #transfem #transmasc #FTVT #FreeTransVoiceTraining
Hey folks 🩷
We've actually done a #TransVoiceFriday recording for the first time in ages :TransHeart:
Please note, however, that the topic of our recording is voice dysphoria, so please don't listen to it if doing so well cause you anxiety or stress 🥺
It ended up a bit longer than our typical ones, so we can't put the transcript in the alt text, due to the stupid alt text limit that not even Glitch-SOC will let us increase 😖
As such, we've added the full transcript below within this post 🩷
#TransVoice #VoiceTraining #VoiceFeminisation #VoiceDysphoria #trans #transgender #TransFem #TransWoman #transition #queer #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+
Transcript
Hey lovelies. It's just about still Friday, so we thought we'd try to do a Trans Voice Friday recording for the first time in... so long that we literally have no idea when we last recorded one! Honestly don't even remember if we've even done one this year! We're recording from our phone, rather than our desktop microphone, so apologies if the quality is shitty. Please note that any perceived poor quality might just be our shitty voice.
Okay, so for anyone who doesn't already know, our voice has been and sadly continues to be a constant source of gender dysphoria for us. Our voice dysphoria negatively impacts us perhaps a level of magnitude more than facial dysphoria, which in turn is noticeably above genital dysphoria for us. And sadly it's been getting worse for us over time.
Back when we first started voice training in December 2021, we were cautiously optimistic that maybe, just maybe, over time we'd manage to achieve a voice that sounded at least tolerable to us, and which didn't constantly get us misgendered. For a while, it felt like we were even making progress. However, we've been increasingly misgendered not just on the phone but in person, and honestly we're really struggling with it. It's not like we can afford voice feminisation surgery like endoscopic modified Wendler Glottoplasty, and despite multiple requests and complaints, our shitty NHS gender clinic won't even meet with us to let us plead our case for them to request funding for it. Even if they agreed to submit an Individual Funding Request for us, which they refuse to do, it would still ultimately be up to our local Integrated Care Board to review and make a decision on whether to fund it or not, and their answer would almost certainly be "no".
We're trying to find a way forward, but honestly we're kind of just holding on right now. Please, please kindly don't tell us that we'll get there in time, that we just need to work harder, or that our voice sounds fine to you. We've worked as hard as we can for over 3 and a half years, and we've not only plateaued, but seemingly gone backwards, based on the increased frequency of misgenderings. We currently don't know where to go from here, but it won't be something that we can easily or quickly achieve. Voices are instruments, and not everyone has a good one, nor the ability to achieve a voice that makes them happy and gets them correctly gendered at least most of the time.
The only joy we have had with our voice at all recently was making our electrologist laugh by dropping our voice down to approximate how we used to sound. It was genuinely lovely to hear her say that she can't believe we used to sound like that, and how it doesn't sound to her like it's us speaking. For those of you who want to hear that voice, {drops voice} it roughly sounds like this. It's not exactly how we used to sound, as we don't ever use our pre-transition voice except as a gimmick to make people laugh, but it's about as close as we can get now, and it highlights the progress we have made, even though it's not enough for us to feel content or get consistently gendered correctly. {restores voice}
Please be mindful of survivorship bias in online voice training videos, as well as the culture of toxic positivity that is sometimes associated with it. We don't want people to give up, but it's really important to have realistic goals and know that not everyone will succeed by voice training alone.
But anyway, we've talked far too long, and that's more than enough voice dysphoria discussion for a while. Take care of yourselves folks.
A little #TransVoiceFriday for you where I talk a little about recent college memories, the lesbian trans woman question of “be or be with” as well as clothes/fashion and a sort of announcement?
So, I've been keeping snippets of my voice training recordings so I could listen back to them to track my progress. I recorded a little before and after. The before was after about 2 weeks of daily training.
#TransVoice #TransVoiceFriday (Just not on Friday. Whoops. Sorry. I'm breaking the rules)
Came up with this while messing around with pitch and resonance last night and I think it's a kinda fun party trick. 😁
Oh, huh, well this is convenient :cat_giggle: Here's a fedi-only preview (read: the whole damn thing) of my reading of Nightingales: Fact or Fiction from the Elder Scrolls games :bear_love:
Unlike my previous two videos (https://cutie.city/@OctaviaConAmore/114142926310492434), this one was recorded from scratch instead of clipped from one my twitch streams, so there are fewer errors in the reading as well as a bit better sound treatment on the audio file :shiba_love:
Succubard Soft Reads:
Nightingales - Fact or Fiction (from The Elder Scrolls)
#TransVoice #TransVoiceFriday #ElderScrolls #Skyrim #Bookstodon #Trans
something a little different this #TransVoiceFriday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Tablet
I'm reading Isaac Newton's translation of the Hermetic text
It's #TransVoiceFriday, and in the absence of any better ideas here's another bit of Hitchhikers' chosen at random.
@portugeek That's beautiful. The gauntlet has been thrown down.
Some nights, while doing the washing up after one or two or ten glasses of wine, I think my singing is okay, and have been tempted to deploy it on #TransVoiceFriday. I was thinking the Pogues, but I adore the post-Pepper Beatles.
Mind you, in that state, I also think my dancing is okay. I have a high centre of gravity and no physical coordination to speak of, so what I call "dancing" is more a sort of controlled falling over.
Trans sisters, I need some honest feedback on my singing voice. I haven't posted on Trans Voice Friday for a long time because I feel like my voice hasn't changed in a while, it's pretty stable in a higher pitch and feminine resonance; this has become my default voice and I am super happy with that.
But I still struggle with my singing voice, specially when trying to sing songs from male artists that I knew from before the transition. I have been working with a singing coach for a few months now on and have learned a few techniques but hadn't felt happy with the outcome. Yesterday, though, I recorded my voice over The Beatles' Blackbird and... I like my voice in it? Kind of? It sounds feminine enough, in some moments more than others (I think I hit the nail in the first few lines in particular), but I feel like someone who didn't know me listening to this would think I am a woman. Am I crazy? What do you think? Honest opinions are welcome, if it's not what I want to hear!
Hey fedi lovelies :FediverseSymbol: :catgirl_sleepy:
Today's #TransVoiceFriday is unfortunately a rant about so many things going wrong in the world, so please, please don't listen to it if you're not in the right frame of mind for this.
#TransVoice #VoiceTraining #rant #vent #MagnetoWasRight #TransRightsAreHumanRights #trans #transgender #queer #LGBTQ+ #LGBTQIA+ #voice
Oh! I did a #TransVoiceFriday today. While it was Friday. (I know!)
It's that bit from Hamlet what Withnail does in front of some wolves, in the last scene of Withnail and I, which Alexei and Talal reviewed recently.
I did it, I did #transvoicefriday
Here’s a special version of #TransVoiceFriday where I wish you a Happy New Year, talk about the wild west and my neighbor Florida Man.
Happy New Year all you awesome people.
#HappyNewYear
#Year2025.
I think it's still Friday somewhere in the world. Here's me croaking a delightful little poem which @Natasha_Jay brought to the Internet's attention a week or two ago.
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