Vocal fullness is a relatively new concept in trans voice, originally introduced by Clover Grigsby of TransVoiceLessons. Before we can get into what it means, we have to briefly go into the concept of vocal weight!
Explanation
Vocal weight essentially refers to various ways that a voice can create buzz which will make it sound heavier. If we reduce these buzzing sounds, the voice will sound lighter. I like to break them down into three categories:
Vocal Fry - A low speed buzz
Closed Quotient - A medium speed buzz
Brassiness - A high speed buzz
Generally, feminine voices will have a lighter weight, and masculine voices will have a heavier weight. This brings us to our concept of fullness. Vocal fullness refers to the balance between resonance and weight that when achieved will help create a more natural sounding and often cis-passing voice. When the weight of a voice is in balance with a give resonance, it is a full voice. If there's too much weight, the voice is overfull, too little and it's underfull. Both underfullness and overfullness will make a voice of any resonance sound androgynous and cartoonish. If we achieve fullness, however, the gender of your resonance will shine through! If resonance is our scale of masculine to feminine, vocal fullness is our scale from the gender of your resonance being obscured or shining through.
A very common issue that many people run into while voice training is that their voice does not sound natural when they're supposed to be done training. When this happens, vocal fullness is almost always the solution to this issue. The reason this happens is because we learn to shift one thing at a time, and the most common thing that's taught is resonance work. Doing only resonance work will result in a voice that is the right resonance for your target voice, but still with the weight of your old voice and so now the two are mismatched! In order to finish the process and get a more natural sounding voice, you learn to shift your weight to a typical weight for your target voice. For feminizing, this often means reducing vocal weight. For masculinizing, this often means creating vocal weight.
What to do:
For those who are feminizing, use the below exercises to reduce your vocal weight. For those masculinizing, use the below exercises to increase your weight. Try a combination of these exercises in your target resonance and be ready to have to play around with them until you can find a balance you like. This is a fairly difficult and artful step, so if you have any trouble feel free to reach out to me or any of the other coaches if you need help! (info on that is as the bottom of this link)
Vocal Fry
*Note: Vocal fry does not seem to affect perceived gender as the other two aspects do, leaving it only being an effective way to change the flavor instead of the gender of a voice.
What does it sound like?
A crackling sound much like dropping something wet into hot oil, hence the name "fry."
How do I change it?
This one is a bit tricky, as it's easier to fry on hard sounding words, and harder on soft sounding words. So we use a tiered list of words, starting soft to learn how to not fry at all. We then move onto harder words, to improve our ability to not go into vocal fry despite the harder words. To add fry to your voice, you do the reverse. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/alyssavt/glottal-attacks-vocal-fry
( feminizing / masculinizing )
Closed Quotient / Open Quotient
What do they sound like?
Two sides of the same coin, they produce a "buzzing" sound or a lack of one in the voice.
How do I change it?
Through an exercise called a "Quotient Slide."
( feminizing / masculinizing )
4 Tips to Quotient Slides:
1. Keep volume consistent
2. One breath up, one breath down
3. When you go up, stay at the top for a second or two
4. When you come back down, don't relax as to let back in the buzz or go into vocal fry
Brassiness / Breathiness
What do they sound like?
Also two sides of the same coin. Brassiness is usually louder and heavier, creating a trumpet-like sound. Breathiness is usually very airy and light, creating a breathing like sound.
How do I change it?
Through an exercise called the "Gee - Heh" exercise. "Gee" is an inherently bright and brassy sound. "Heh" is an inherently light and breathy sound. To get more breathy, recite "Gee" three times in a row, then read three sentences aloud, trying to make them as bright as the "Gee" sound. Then recite the "Heh" sound three times in a row, then read three sentences aloud, trying to make them as breathy as the "Heh" sound. Once you've gone through both once, remove the sentences read after the "Gee" sound. This results in three "Gee" sounds, three "Heh" sounds, and three sentences aloud at the end. To get more brassy, do the same but switch the "Gee" and the "Heh" sounds.
( feminizing / masculinizing )
When you're ready for the next step, move on to Intuitive Resonance Control!
Hopefully this all was helpful! Happy training!