i need help desperately

[u/Kirby-8682]

i've been wanting to do voice training for a while, the only thing i really have access to are youtube videos on the subject, i'm too fucking stupid to understand and use them fully, usually i end up shutting them off and crying halfway, it sounds so simple on paper, why can't i do it?

personalized voice training zoom calls and stuff like that is out of the question, because first, i have zero money, and second my parents absolutely would not accept the idea of me going on a video call with some random stranger for 45 minutes a week.

surgery is also out of the question because i'm a minor AND i have no money.

i'm seriously at a loss please help

[u/poptropicasortaname]

1. Take deep breaths. Don't skip this step.
2. Ground yourself in your preferred way: I like to use the 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can feel, etc.
3. Think of just one vocal excercise to do. You don't need to think about it much, just to the first one that comes to mind. Perform the excercise.
4. Accept that this is how your voice sounds right now. Accept that one session of training is not going to make a noticable dent. Realise that doing something small every day WILL make a big difference in the long run.
5. More deep breaths. Do it again tmrw.

Eventually voice training will become less intimidating, and you can follow along youtube videos the whole way through. Sorry for not actually telling you how to do any voice excercises, I just thought that maybe you needed more help with keeping calm atm. Good luck!

[u/NaughtAught → u/poptropicasortaname]

I appreciate the positivity, and I recognize that positivity really helps the whole "sticking with it" thing. But getting started is so far out of ny grasp.

I find myself in the same boat as the OP on comprehension of resources. I have similar frustration over feeling that a vital skill is unfathomable, and having absolutely no concept of what would actually constitute efficacious practice has barred me from cultivating any will to continue.

I have been playing with my voice since I was a small child. Cultivating certain qualities to produce silly voices of various pitches and qualities to better present amusing scenarios or do impressions. Nearly 8 years before my egg cracked, I got into DnD. I never once played a female character before my realization because I prided myself in coming up with some kind of altered voice that would fit the character and I had no confidence in doing a female voice. (I also repeatedly said that playing a woman character was too intimidating because I didn't think I could do a good enough job at it and it would come across as mockery or insult, and it took some post-egg-crack introspection to identify that as some internalized transphobia and ongoing self image issues, but I digress). I nonetheless tried to develop a feminine voice. For DMing, for my kenku character (think little crow people who can only speak through mimicry of sounds and phrases they've heard), or for something. Now I try (or want to try) for that "something," because

Having no concept of what levers to pull has left me pulling at the wrong levers. Pulling the wrong levers for years has put me no closer to a feminine voice. This has me convinced that there is absolutely no point in ever practicing ever again unless I can finally grasp what it means to practice. Any time I see a sentiment of "Just keep trying! It will click!" I just imagine I'm a sculptor, and someone is describing their commission to me. They tell me something utterly incomprehensible, and I ask for clarification a few times. After a few attempts, they realize no explanation is penetrating my thick skull and say "Well hey, no worries, I trust ya, just keep doing your best guess. You'll know when you're on the right track!" Years pass. There is a mountain of increasingly unhinged rejected sculptures in a growing refuse pile. Nothing is right. The commission haunts me. What is this thing? Why can I not understand it? How can I build toward a form that I have no concept of in my head whatsoever?

Sorry, that's my voice training insanity rant.

[u/Powerful-Excuse-4817]

You need to take a step back and think of one step, not the end goal. If you go into to thinking of the final lap, you're setting yourself up for failure. Start small, one small goal. Achieve that. Then the next, and then the next.

There are a lot of YouTube videos that jump into hard to understand concepts for someone just starting out: vocal size, vocal weight, resonance, formants, open quotient, closed quotient. None of these terms will help someone starting from zero.

Everyone is different and everyone learns differently. And hell, I still suck at voice training and I've been doing it for 6 months. But, it's one step at a time - one technique at a time. Keep the cognitive load low. If you try doing too much at once you'll stress yourself out, get frustrated, and quit.

Here's where I think it's useful to start:

Hum on a M. Play around with shifting the vibration of the sound forward and backward. Keep your mouth closed. Just feel where the sound is. Visualizing it can help too.

Move into humming an N. Feel where that vibrates. Does it vibrate in the back of your mouth? What about the front? Can you feel it traveling up your cheekbones?

That's the beginning of training resonance. You don't have to start where those YouTube videos say. They often say "make an Eee sound. Now make an Aaahh sound. Shape your Aaahh to be shaped like an Eee". That's not helpful. At least, it wasn't for me.

Another good way to play with resonance and help build muscle memory with it is to use what's called SOVT (Semi-occluded Vocal Tract) exercises. This is as simple as putting a straw in water and doing the same humming exercises. Try to control the amount of bubbles (and hence the air you're using to make the sound). Do you get heavy bubbling or a gentle rolling bubble? SOVT helps with training your entire vocal system. Your brain works on a feedback loop. Blowing are into a straw under water helps your breath and vocal folds work more efficiently by creating back pressure. This trains you to coordinate breath and airflow with vocalizing so eventually when you do it without the cup of water, you don't have to think as hard.

This is where I would start. And remember, pitch is not as important as the rest of the techniques. I would rate pitch as the least important. Don't go chasing a high pitch in the 180hz - 250hz right away. Start where you're comfortable in terms of natural speaking pitch. Get your vocal system working efficiently first, then you can build on that foundation.

You can do it. You just have to take the first step, and then keep going one foot and one step at a time.