When “Voi che sapete” became too high for me, I turned to less taxing arias, like Handel’s “Gia l’ebro” and Purcell’s “Fairest Isle.” With these, I reached new low notes, while straining at certain high ones. I was, in Cherubino’s words, “searching for something” within myself.
What was happening in my body?
Holly Reckers, a speech-language pathologist at Columbia University, and an opera singer, said that first and foremost the vocal cords (also called vocal folds because of their flap-like shape) thicken on testosterone. In transmasculine people, the vocal tract — the cavity stretching from the larynx, or voice box, to the lips — also lengthens, perhaps not quite to the length it would be in cisgender men, though there’s much human variation.
It makes sense to me, as a cellist, that thicker “strings” and a bigger cavity might produce a lower tone. “Our body is our instrument,” Reckers said, “and our instrument is changing all the time.” It’s important to keep singing, gently, through the changes. “Your vocal folds are muscles,” she said. “If you’re not using them, they could begin to atrophy.”
Once the voice drops, it can’t un-drop. That’s why people taking estrogen don’t experience vocal changes in the same way that those taking testosterone do. But voice training can work for anyone. I’ve learned in my lessons that the voice is much more malleable than we make it out to be.
I’M NOT A PROFESSIONAL singer. My financial stability does not depend on my voice. The stakes are different, though, for those who sing for a living. For reasons professional and personal, some transmasculine singers forgo hormones. But others have taken them and retrained their post-T voices, continuing their careers with a different vocal range.
Voice types are as wrapped up with identity as the idea of “voice” is. Before testosterone, I fixated on determining if I was a lyric mezzo, or perhaps an in-denial soprano, as if that would reveal some fundamental truth about myself.
Read More: This Is My Voice One Year on T
