The SOVTest Voice

Endaural Episode 006

The SOVTest Voice

FEATURING:

Sarah Hennies / richard valitutto - SOVT

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL:

Sarah Hennies - Falsetto

Sarah Hennies - Reservoir 1

Sarah Hennies - The Reinvention of Romance

TRANSCRIPT:

[This transcript will include additional information in these square brackets, because I did not say everything perfectly here, but I would like to clarify a few things!]

When I was a kid, I watched so many truly terrible movies and TV shows and one of the tropes that would appear again and again was... you'd have a man who gets attacked in his testicles, and this would cause the pitch of his voice to shoot up. And sometimes it would just be for a moment, sometimes it would be for a prolonged period of time, but it presented this idea of the deepness of a voice being maintained by the presence of functioning testicles.

I've been transitioning for a few years now and the experience has taught me that it's entirely possible that this silly trope is what cis people actually believe. That this is how bodies work. If this is what you believe, don't feel too bad about being wrong, because there's so much bad information out there and people are just generally not educated about this kind of thing.

But I can tell you right now, it's not true. There is some partial truth to it, because if the testicles are present and functioning during puberty, then they will cause the voice to drop. Because of the production of testosterone. They will create a physical change in the vocal area. I don't really know all of the science behind it, like vocal cords are just so weird. Like have you ever have you ever actually looked at footage of them at work? It looks... weird. But yeah, I can't explain all that stuff for you. But the important thing here is that once this change has happened, that's it. You can have the testicles removed. You can start injecting estrogen. But the change that has happened from testosterone to the vocal area... that's it. It's there, and you can possibly get some kind of surgery, and some people have gotten really amazing results out of it. Sometimes surgery gets you know dismissed in this discussion, but it's a valid choice. But it can also be cost prohibitive, and it's scary because, you know, the voice is invisible, in a way. And so for most of us, we have to turn to voice training. We have to learn how to play our instrument in a way that avoids the capacity for it to express a masculine gender identity and focus in on its capacity for something different.

[Apologies for not being completely inclusive here! I should note that transfem individuals who are non-binary and do not identify as women also pursue vocal feminization. I was just focused on myself here, and I have a complicated relationship with the idea of being feminine and so I consider myself a trans woman but not exactly "transfem". Not that I'd reject the label from others, but claiming it for myself feels weird because I don't think I'm especially feminine and so it'd be like those old Apple Jacks commercials where the adult asks "why do you like apple jacks when they don't even taste like apples", I am afraid to open myself up to that line of questioning. And another omission, trans men and transmasc individuals also have potential interests in voice training, because even if they are taking testosterone and producing a change in their voice, there may still be some work that is desired in learning how to play their newly altered instrument]

And so I'm not just telling you all of this for no reason. The music I'm gonna be talking about today is inspired by the artist's trans voice experience. The composer Sarah Hennies (who has already done a couple pieces that are inspired by her experience with trans voice training) has a new recording out called "SOVT" (or S O V T, depending on how you want to approach the title there). I've always heard it pronounced as "softy", and I like that, because it reminds me of soft serve ice cream. It stands for Semi Occluded Vocal Tract, and this is referring to some vocal exercises that are common with singers, or with trans women who want to get more control over their voice. It involves taking a straw and doing little pitch glides, or even singing through the straw. I will not be demonstrating this for you, because when I was in second grade, in music class, I got up and sang God Bless America, and my voice was shaky and everybody laughed at me. And so I hate singing publicly, and also God, and America. So I won't be doing that. But you can go on YouTube and learn about it from people who are qualified to talk about the specifics. If I tried to teach you it, I'd probably tell you something wrong anyway, so it's better that you go for people who know what they're talking about.

[I should note that Sarah Hennies is not just a composer! She also performs, though in this case, the music is performed by richard valitutto, who I don't mention at all in this podcast but he does *amazing* on this, there are so many subtlties and tricky timings, when I write about this music in full I will be sure to give him the proper credit for what he pulled off here!]

But I've, you know, even if I can't tell you all about this particular exercise, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my voice and trying to control it better. So this experience has really informed the way I engage with this piece of music, and so I'm gonna talk a bit about my experience with changing my voice, and then after that we'll talk a bit about the music. So to start with, let's take a listen to a recording of my old voice, back in 2010 when I was 25 years old. In this recording I will be talking about how to record a sound on a computer and how to upload it to a website.

"Just go to your start menu, check out your under your accessories, sound recorder. There you are. Record. You probably have a mic built into your computer, if not, you can use your headphones. Just plug those into your mic port, and yeah, record, and then stop. Save it. And upload it, maybe to a site like mediafire.com, or megaupload. I don't really have a Mac. I hear those are easier, so you guys should have no trouble figuring it out"

Alright, and now we are back in the present. So, I think I sound a bit different now. At least I hope I do. Because god, I hated that old voice. I don't even know if I always sounded like that old voice, like I mean, you know, there's always like, when you're recording something, you get into a different tone, but like, even back then, like every time I would speak I wasn't entirely sure what voice would come out, and never felt like I had a voice of my own. It would just be, whatever happened, and then I just kind of roll with it and keep going. But I feel like I could sound like all kinds of people. Back then I never had one for myself. And this was kind of by design, because by this age, 25, it had been 14 years since I recognized that I was trans. But like, I'd grown up in the 90's, and so, some of you younger listeners may not know (because you weren't alive) but, it was not the best time for trans representation in the media. Like the idea of who would get to do this, and how much it would cost, both financially and otherwise, it made it seem like I would never be able to have that life. And so the only way I was able to survive with that level of hopelessness was to embrace a sort of... noisy existence. The sort of thing that was discernable and recognizable as some kind of coherent form from a distance that other people would see me from, like I was just one thing to them. But the proximity I had to myself meant that this noise allowed me to never really feel like I was one person, because if I did have the awareness of the one person that I actually was, I would be destroyed.

But I still found that this noise was not enough to exist as, I needed something more. And so, on a subconscious level, I started to kind of soften my voice. And I don't even really know what I was doing. But eventually I got to a point where I would call up businesses, like my cable company when my internet went out, and they would immediately and very confidently identify me as a woman. Knowing that I was capable of having this expression eventually led to me having the confidence to pursue a transition (at age 36). But my prolonged existence in the noise caused some problems with consistently accessing what I was able to do. Because it was easy enough when I was just a disembodied voice on the phone, but when I had to be a whole person, with a face... I didn't like my face, and so, allowing a voice to come out that I didn't feel like my face had earned proved to be quite difficult.

And so I you know worked really hard at trying to figure out, like, what am I doing with my throat? What am I... how does this voice come out of me? Like what physically is happening? Like I couldn't find control over it. And so I did what anyone would do in the 2020s, which is go onto YouTube and search for something. And I found so many contradictory and confusing approaches to changing your voice. Like, there are so many technical jargon terms... so I picked up a few little bits of knowledge, but mostly, none of it really worked for me. But I knew that I was capable of doing a voice that worked for me. I knew that I had a voice inside of me that could work, I could hear it and not feel terrible.

[This is not to say that voice training practices are inadequate, it's more that my own issues lead to difficulties. I encourage interested people to take a look at transvoice.party to see what kind of resources are out there]

But just figuring out how to bring it into a part of my whole existence... I really, really struggled. So eventually, I got the bright idea... I created an improv prompt generator. And this allowed me to come up with characters, and put them in situations, and portray them. If I had a mental block that would not allow myself the voice that I wanted, then let's take *myself* out of the equation. I describe it as having the mind sneaking past itself, but I don't know if my mind is especially susceptible to deception, or if this is actually a very good idea for everyone to try. But it fucking worked. And I was able to build my confidence, and get a good idea of what happens with my voice to do the things that I want to do, and also, like, I was finding things that I never even realized my voice was capable of. And I pushed myself to do these things, and that got me to the point where I have the voice that I'm speaking with right now. And I think it's a pretty good voice. Like, I won't say it's perfect, because it's not perfect. I really wish it was perfect. I want it to be perfect. But it's not perfect. But I don't even know if perfection is possible for me, because you heard that old recording. My voice is weird. And... I think it's just always gonna be weird.

So, I don't think there's anybody out there who had my exact experience. And many trans women would tell you that my starting position was quite lucky. They've certainly told me. And you know, that's fair. I didn't have to do the same struggles that they've had... but I still feel like the experience has brought me to madness and beyond. And I don't know if I'm ever gonna be normal about my voice. But I feel like I've made it. I feel like I've arrived somewhere that I can be happy with at least. But yes, so, that whole experience is what I bring as a listener to this new piece by Sarah Hennies.

So you may be unsurprised to hear that I hear a descent into madness in this new piece. Which is, you know, "what a coincidence". Because that's my experience. But I don't think I'm totally off base with this interpretation, because If you look at her previous stuff dealing with trans voice training, like the piece "Contralto", I haven't actually watched that because when it was available to rent, I was deep in my repression, and I could not handle any kind of direct engagement with trans topics. But the sort of indirect, abstracted approach of her piece "Falsetto" was perfect for me because, you know, it wasn't, you know, it was around but not directly *at* the topic. And so this piece is something you can find on one of her albums, but I would recommend looking on YouTube for a video of the performance, because the visual component really sells the exhaustion that is being depicted. Like, the piece itself is so demanding on the performer, that it's asking for more than any one person can actually do. And so you see her, you know, like, trying to keep all of these spinning plates in motion, basically. And the exhaustion builds and builds, until it's just like, it's just not sustainable. And so that piece communicated to me a certain misery in attempting this kind of voice transformation.

And so actually, a lot of Hennies' work is, to me, it feels like it's dealing with time as a destructive and exhausting force. And like, there's some pieces of hers that don't directly deal with trans issues at all, like "The Reinvention of Romance" or "Reservoir 1". Those are both really amazing. I highly recommend you go check them out. It shows the way something is transformed by its continued existence. And it's just such a beautiful and terrifying thing to witness.

[I feel like I maybe do not describe the situation here correctly, because the Reinvention of Romance is a much more hopeful transformation of continued existence, it shows two identities coming to find a way to cohabitate, it's really touching! I just wanted to clarify that. Also, it bugs me that when I said "Hennies'", I didn't really pronounce the apostrophe and so it sounds like I'm just saying Hennies. But by the time I noticed, I wouldn't have been able to re-record it without the new recording standing out.]

But yeah, she's just so good. Like, seriously, just go listen to everything, because it's all really good. But those two in particular are like, my favorites. But honestly, this new one is shooting right up there. I'm not placing it among my favorites because it's just so new. I don't want to do the recency bias thing, but it's a contender. I'll tell you that right now. It's just so incredible. But I feel like this [SOVT], it's not quite as explicit, but it still carries this exhaustion of time. And so, just to talk a bit about the piece, it's a solo piano piece, but the piano has been modified. There's an intervention that has been done to transition the piano from its default sound into something that has been treated. There's like some kind of putty that has been applied to many of the strings, that is meant to kind of evoke this muted tone that you can get out of the SOVT exercise.

The opening of the piece kind of evokes (for me) the initial exciting promise of arriving at the capacity for your instrument to create a feminized sound. When it starts out kind of tenuous, we're just having this one little note. And then that gradually expands out, more and more. And it's just so exciting. It's like venturing out into the world that you really wanted to exist in. And it starts expanding more and more. And then this happens. This low note comes in. The instrument's capability of making a sound that is not compatible with the gender identity that is desired here, at least that's how I am reading it. When I heard that, it was just devastating, like I felt a pain that I knew all too well. And it just keeps coming and coming alongside the established feminized notes. And this leads to further and further trouble. Because one thing about these feminized notes is that they're quiet. They're not especially loud. You know, it's, uh, there are many times that I wish I can scream and, you know, it's not just because I live in an apartment that I'm not able to. I don't know how to make a scream with my voice without sounding especially masculine. And I would rather not scream if that's my choice.

[It really bugs me that I said "I wish I can scream" rather than "I wish I could scream". I apologize for my sloppy grammar. And for all of the "like" and "you know" filler language, like what am I doing here, do I need to *prove* that I am a child of the 90's? It's obnoxious, I'm sorry.]

But we see in the piano, this attempt to find something louder, something with a bit more weight, and it comes out like this. And you know, it's not something that I would call *masculine*, but it feels like it's not reaching the same success that we saw in the beginning. Like, there's things with the pitch level being high, but it still doesn't quite work. And so as we progress through these phases, these repetitions, over and over again, just trying to develop the voice of this instrument, we keep running into problems. And it feels like a frustration builds. And then around the middle of the piece, we get into this segment, where the established feminized notes are repeating really rapidly and just like, there's a sense of banging your head against the wall of what you've achieved. And then the repetition drops in pitch. And I just hear so much pain in that. Like this just feels like a difficulty that I know all too well. And it is beautiful to hear this pain depicted, but... God, it's frustrating. So I don't want to just, you know, spoil the whole piece for you here. I think it's important for you to engage it on your own and make your own conclusions about where the piece goes from here, whether it has a happy ending or not. I think building your own meaning is a big part of the appeal of this kind of strange music. So I don't want to take that away from you, but hopefully sharing my experience and kind of pointing out these little things here will give you a way of engaging with the music beyond just being, oh, you know, it's pure abstract notes and just, you know, expressions of wordless feelings.

This conceptual packaging that is applied to the music, it can feel like it's extraneous sometimes, but I feel like it really comes through in the substance of what this music is. Like sometimes I've seen, you know, music that has this kind of thing and it feels like bullshit. But... having the experience that I have with trans voice training, I feel like it means something here. I feel like it's important and it is worth engaging with this music, with this conceptual framework. When we get to the end of the year, I will write something in full about the entirety of this music because... it goes places. There's so much more that it has to say. And yeah, but I don't want to, I don't want to spoil it. I want you to have the chance to find this, or to find something else, that maybe my explanation would hide from you. So that will come later. And I encourage you to engage this music as soon as possible because it is incredible.

All right, so I know that I normally try to aim for around an hour on this, but this one took a lot out of me. So I'm going to just call it here. I hope this was interesting for you. And... it might be a little while until I make another one of these because life's a little crazy right now. I don't know if you all watch the news, but... it's a bit rough out here for trans people. So... there's a lot of shit I gotta figure out. So I'm going to be doing that. But, in the meantime, I will be posting on Bluesky, @endaural.com and, you know, I'll post little bits about music. But yes, eventually I hope to record some more of these because I do love talking about music and like, I think this format can be very good for like pointing at specific parts of the music, explaining things, and I'd like to do more of that. But all right, I hope you have a great rest of your day and hopefully I'll talk to you again soon.