Serious question:
If a guy has a natural-born effeminate voice, how difficult is it for him to change it, if he wants to?
Anyone ever dealt with this issue, either first, second or third hand?
Anyone ever dealt with this issue, either first, second or third hand?
Well smoking will cause a deeper more "gravely" sound to the voice (in both men and women) in fact many early radio DJ's would chain smoke just to keep their "radio voice". Of course this might not be the healthiest option.... The only other thing I could think of would be to purposefully work on a "stage voice" like character actors due, actually practice talking deeper and more masculine, then eventually it will be done without thinking about it...
Speech therapy can be very effective. But it takes hard work and vigilance for the individual.
1. There are many born tenors. Nothing wrong with that. It's what he SAYS and how he says it that is important. Tell him that being a tenor is fine...he can become the next Luciano Pavarotti, the 20th century's FINEST tenor. He did have the tenor voice when speaking.
2. I taught young men and women for 27 years. I noticed the pitch of voices, as some young women are natural altos. NO BIG DEAL. Make sure that no stigma is attached to the natural tenor/alto. Why change what God made? They ought to embrace it and sing the parts. There are a ton of tenor songs as there are alto songs.
Glee clubs, singing groups, whatever, always need tenors.
**TRUTH: The TENOR always gets the best singing parts...and, in opera, the tenor ALWAYS, ALWAYS gets the girl.
Actors change their voices all the time. They have to. It drives me crazy when horrible-sounding politicians get on the air and screech. Easy to lower the voice - but you must listen to how you sound and how people respond to your voice. I’ve seen gay male actors butch up their voices when it was either a matter of getting the job or not getting a job.
Hillary: take a voice lesson.
If a guy has a natural-born effeminate voice, how difficult is it for him to change it, if he wants to?
Anyone ever dealt with this issue, either first, second or third hand?
My advice is to try and relax -- seriously. I never realized just how much anxiety and tension kept raised the pitch of my own voice. Once I disciplined myself to relax, especially the muscles controlling my voice box, my voice become a normal man's voice.
<< If a guy has a natural-born effeminate voice >>
I think you (and just about all the other commentors on this thread) have missed the point:
It’s not about having an “effeminate voice” or about speaking in a uniformaly high pitch.
Rather, it’s about the Valley Girls’ habit of making most declarative sentences sound like questions, due to rising pitch at the ends of phrases, particularly at the ends of sentences.
In other words, too many young men are now saying things like this:
“We went to Santa Monica today? and we surfed until four o’clock? Then we went back to the Valley? and we sniffed glue until midnight?”
All those phrases sound like questions to us normal people. But for the Valley Girls and their fawning imitators, every one of the phrases is meant to be declarative.
Go figure.
I doubt it’s natural-born effeminate, rather a natural-born tenor. You could sing Bach.