Gender Affirming Voice Training at UTS

The SPROUTS clinic provides gender affirming voice training to trans and gender diverse clients who may wish to alter their voice to better align with their gender identity. This may include feminisation or masculinisation of their voice.

What it involves

Gender affirming voice training is based on the La Trobe University Voice Modification Training Program (La Trobe University Clinic). This voice training program uses evidence-based approaches for voice modification.

Assessment

The voice assessment is essential in evaluating your voice, giving us specific detail of what your voice can do. Assessment will be completed before any training begins. Our assessment allows us to plan how to best help your voice moving forward.

The assessment consists of:

1. A case history – Your student Speech Pathologist will ask about your journey, and how your voice has affected your life. They will ask about how you perceive your voice, what habits you have associated with your voice (e.g., singing), and the outcome you want.
2. A student Speech Pathologist will listen to your voice. They will assess loudness, pitch, and the quality of your voice.
3. The student speech pathologist will record your voice. They will analyse the recordings with computer software to understand how your voice works.

With all of the information from assessment, the student Speech Pathologist will be able to work with you to make a plan for support. It is up to you whether to proceed with voice training after the assessment.

Voice education

After the assessment, the student Speech Pathologist will provide you with education to help you better understand how your voice works. This will include information on:

• How you produce your voice.
• The characteristics and limits of a feminine and masculine voice.
• How to accomplish your voice goals.

Voice training

The first part of voice training is establishing a strong and clear voice so that no harm is done to your voice. Therefore, voice training will cover:

• Voice health
• Stretching and relaxing your voice
• Breathing efficiency techniques to accompany your voice.
• Exercises to increase the clarity, strength and stamina of your voice.

Once you can maintain a strong, clear voice, the student Speech Pathologist will introduce and teach you exercises to change your pitch (how high or low your voice sounds) and your resonance (how your voice reverberates in your body). You will need to practice these exercises at home every day to see changes in your voice.

The student Speech Pathologist will see you regularly for a few months to make sure that you are doing the exercises well, so that you can maintain a healthy voice that sounds the way you want.

Review sessions

You can schedule review sessions after completing your training. In these sessions, the student Speech Pathologist can help you review your technique again.

Make an appointment or send a referral 

Our specialist Gender Affirming Voice Training clinic operates on Tuesdays.

Sessions are offered in-person or online, fortnightly, for a 5-month period. Home practice is required between sessions to ensure progress towards your goals.

To be added to our waitlist, please download, complete, and return the case history/consent form below.

download Gender affirming voice training case history/consent form (docx, 237KB)

mail Email the completed form directly to speechpathology.clinic@uts.edu.au  

Please note, we are not able to provide services to individuals who are already accessing speech pathology services (i.e. wanting to access BOTH our service and another speech pathology provider at the same time). This policy allows us to keep our service available to those who may not be able access alternative speech pathology providers.