How can teachers help transmasculine students who are taking testosterone adapt to singing voice changes? Here’s some helpful advice.

Stephen Davidson is a voice coach for trans and non-binary singers and has, in his own words, “worked with every kind of voice under the sun”.

So, who better to explain how testosterone affects the voice and what singing teachers can expect in the studio when working with students who are on hormone replacement therapy?

Here are some nuggets of advice from Stephen, taken from his recent interview on the Singing Teachers Talk podcast.

When it comes to testosterone, no two singers are the same

It’s not possible to make a prediction about any one person’s voice. Some people go on a full dose of testosterone, and it takes nine months for anything to shift. Others go on a low dose, and a week later, they’ve dropped an octave.

But broadly speaking, after a few months, the pitch starts dropping. In the first six months to a year, you’ll get about an octave of range in the bottom of the chest voice, and everything will mosey on down accordingly.

After that big jump, you’ll usually have another couple of gentle, little drops over the next couple of years. For things to feel settled, the average is three or four years.

Issues to consider with Testosterone and the Singing Voice

What happens [when you take testosterone] is the vocal folds thicken, much like they would in a cis male puberty. As they’re thicker, they go slower and the pitch drops.

But unless folks start testosterone quite early in life, the larynx doesn’t grow in the same way that it would in a cis male puberty, so we don’t always get the same lengthening.

There’s no automatic, bigger, boomier space for those vocal folds to live in and operate in. It’s a slightly different voice type but quite usable once you get the hang of it.

Testosterone doesn’t do all of the work

People are often surprised at how much they can adjust their voice [without hormone replacement therapy]. Even if the pitch isn’t going to drop past a certain point, the weight and the resonance we can use with practice make a big difference.

How can singing teachers help?

Anything you can do to help create space and relaxation and settle in a nice warm chest voice is always the first port of call.

The biggest issue I see is pitch instability, especially around the middle of the range.

You can come across difficulty matching a pitch and holding it in a sustained manner. Irritatingly, sometimes the better your ear is, the more you panic about that, and the more everything tightens up to try to control it.

The number one thing that trans singers need is a slightly longer, slower warmup to help everything chill out and relax.

Don’t be afraid to go back to basics

Changed and changing voices need precise technique. We need good habits around tongue and jaw tension, warmups, not taking too much weight or pressure up with us and managing vocal fold weight.

If those are lacking, a talented person may get away with it with a higher voice. But when the voice changes, they won’t be able to get away with that anymore.

We’ll often have to take some of the technique back to a slightly rudimentary level to really check in with everything.

If you think a singer is taking testosterone, should you ask them?

Someone might mention that they’re on testosterone in a lesson, but I wouldn’t aggressively question them, particularly if someone hasn’t outed themselves to you.I feel like, broadly, medical stuff is off the table.

How can we approach working in head voice?

For transmasculine singers, working in head voice can be uncomfortable for many reasons.

Some transmasculine folk are really attached to their pre-testosterone high notes and will do any exercise you give them to try and keep those notes as clear and clean as they possibly can.

For those who have a little more dysphoria around singing high, or if they’ve just had a big drop and things are unstable, I would settle in the chest range first.

Number 1 Tip

Check-in a lot and start to work the self-reflection muscle for that singer. I will stop all the time and ask someone how something feels, how they feel or how it sounded.

Even if someone’s answer is ‘I don’t know’ the first handful of times, I will keep asking because I want them to keep thinking about it. I suppose you do that with any singer but do it twice as much with transmasculine singers.

Learn more

Listen to our full interview with Stephen on the podcast here.

Image credit: Canva