The importance of articulation work in voice feminization training
Since the beginning of my career, I have always given a valuable place to articulation work in my voice feminization and harmonization sessions. Indeed, I have always been acoustically sensitive to the quality of the sound, its resonance, timbre and color. I think that throughout my 16 years of profession, I have developed a skill that allows me to know the voice of my patients even without seeing them, as well as to detect how they place their voice, if the articulation and the imposition of the voice are correct or efficient.
The concept of femininity changes with each person, and although we women do not all express ourselves in the same way, there are many parameters that influence female speech, from genetics to education, including the anatomical disposition of the resonators and the personality of the patient. During the voice training proposed in the Astudillo method, a correctly defined articulatory scheme is pursued from minute one, which allows the development of a more feminine articulation from the very first session, giving it a fundamental place in the exercises.
Specificity of the female articulation
First of all, if we study the difference between female speech and male speech, we clearly observe that female speech has a more precise, more open and softer articulation:
- More precise articulation (consonants): the articulatory point is approached by the female in a more concrete and precise manner. For example, when articulating phonemes beginning with the “T” sound, the apex of the female tongue tends to be located at a precise point behind the upper incisors and to approach it in a fine manner. However, in male speech, according to my perception, the sound is more explosive, “louder”, more violent and is approached in a coarser and less precise manner.
- More open articulation (Vowels): when women pronounce vowels, what we do is to open our mouths wider. This opening is accompanied by a more developed facial expressiveness and a more pronounced use of facial muscles than in men. In other words, it is as if the sound is more outward during female speech, giving us the acoustic sensation of a more audible and clearer voice thanks to a more efficient voice imposition. Therefore, in the Astudillo method we work on voice placement and resonance from session one.
- Smoother articulation: there is a link between the pronunciation of vowels and consonants which produces orally and aurally a perception of sounds, phonemes, words and sentences much softer than in men. In fact, female speech is generally less explosive, less abrupt, the articulation is less pronounced, the musculature is more relaxed and more flexible, and the result is “softer”.
Moreover, throughout all these years I have observed in my patients a general tendency to present, at the beginning of training, a closed joint, either hypertensive or with a tendency to hypotonia.
We can find two types of cases:
- Patients with an overly tense articulation due to the patient trying to hide her voice by a closed articulation. In this case, the patient constantly controls her articulation, which causes her to have an articulation that is too pronounced, too strong, too little or not flexible.
- Patients with an excessively relaxed articulation (almost hypotonic), leading to a sometimes unintelligible articulation, often related to a lack of facial expressiveness during speech. Many patients are forced to hide their identity by adopting male expressive patterns out of obligation, which leads them to reduce their facial expressiveness and, therefore, their articulation is affected.
I have assiduously associated the work of articulation with the work of facial expression and expressivity. Moreover, I believe that the two are closely related and that in the muscular pathway, it is important to associate them in order to obtain better results. Thus, in my method I work on what I call “the opening of the mask”, opening not only the articulation but also the face at an expressive level.
For this, it is important to develop the oro-facial musculature from the first session. Everything is related. Thus, during training, we will achieve an increasingly open articulation, increasingly relaxed, increasingly elastic and soft, in short, we will obtain a more precise articulation associated with an increasingly natural and flexible facial expressiveness.
It should be noted that the degree of openness is clearly related to the patient’s personality and her own concept of femininity. I never impose a precise articulatory scheme, I only guide the patient; she is the sole master of her articulation. This work belongs to the personalization phase.
Once all this is set in motion, we affiliate this practice to the work on the emotional voice, which will make the articulation richer and more coherent, and will eventually establish an emotional balance linked to the patient’s identity and her way of expressing herself according to her own personality and the circumstances of her daily life.
Finally, the Astudillo method gives great importance to articulation and places its work at the level of the muscular pathway, developing its exercise in the phase of exploration, exaggeration and personalization. The objective of the training of feminization and harmonization of the voice is to develop a more precise, softer and more open articulation, accompanied by a more relaxed, more elastic and dynamic facial expressiveness. We will thus obtain a more flexible and free feminine voice, allowing the patient to be freer in her self-expression.