What to expect during your first treatment session?

During the initial treatment session, we will introduce basic strategies to help you modify pitch and resonance. While many find the process of exploring vocal adjustments to be a challenge, it is important to know that no prior voice experience is needed to find success in gender-affirming voice therapy. Below we have included things you can expect from your first treatment session with us:

Remediating vocal health barriers:

Our top priority is helping you find a voice that is aligned with your gender and that is sustainable and healthy for the long term. Your initial evaluation will reveal any barriers currently present in your voice that might make it difficult to achieve a healthy and sustainable voice that meets your needs. For example, you might need to work on breath support, hydration, or management of conditions that impact the health of your voice (e.g. acid reflux/GERD). Vocal function exercises, breath support exercises, or gentle lifestyle modifications may be recommended by your therapist to optimize your success in voice therapy.

Exploring initial target pitch goals:

Part of the initial evaluation process involves collecting baseline measurements of your voice across a variety of tasks (e.g., reading aloud sentences, reading passages, producing spontaneous speech). Knowing where your current pitch range lies will help us to establish individualized goals for pitch. We typically begin practice sustaining your voice within a target range while reading aloud words and sentences. It is important to know that we typically work on raising/lowering the pitch in a gradual manner. Maintaining the health of your voice is extremely important to us, so by making small adjustments to pitch over time, we can ensure that you are never placing your voice under unnecessary strain. 

Exploring resonance strategies: 

Resonance relates to how the voice is filtered while speaking to make it sound acoustically “brighter” or “darker.” We can establish a “brighter” voice by creating a smaller and narrower vocal tract, while a “darker” voice requires us to establish a larger and longer vocal tract. Similarly to pitch work, we will play around with resonance strategies at simple levels of practice (i.e., at the sound, word, sentence level). Because there are no measurements (outside of listener perception) that we can use to assess resonance, it can be helpful to listen back to voice recordings to assess whether the voice sounds perceptually “bright” or “dark.” 

It’s important to remember that these are potential approaches you might encounter during your initial treatment session, but your therapist will individualize each of your sessions to meet your specific needs and goals. If you have any additional questions about the treatment process, don’t hesitate to reach out! You can reach us at authenticvoicesllc@gmail.com or (267) 709-9006.