BEFORE ANYTHING I JUST WANNA MAKE IT CLEAR THAT I AM NOT A DOCTOR THIS IS JUST ME SPEAKING FROM MY EXPERIENCE REMEMBER THAT ANECDOTES ARE NOT SCIENCE OKAY LET'S DO THIS I'M SORRY THIS IS AN ESSAY I DON'T KNOW HOW ELSE TO BE
When I came out to people, I was met with a lot of transphobic questions like, "But, you worked so hard on your voice, why would you ruin it? Wait, I thought you wanted a career in music, why are you destroying your chance? It's all you have, realllllly think about this." The fearmongering almost worked. My voice was what got me out of hell, it was my chance to make the island proud. Should I risk it?
What if I told you they were wrong? What if learning to sing the second time is just like the first? What if it's easier?
It turned out to be a lot of things, some unexpected, some surprising: though none like they talked about. Because ruining your voice through Hormone Replacement Therapy is, in my experience, completely impossible. My response to people before I started was a hypothesis of mine, one that I tested on myself and found successful. You'll sing in a different register potentially, sure. But talent is not determined by a person's octave range. Being a good singer comes from somewhere else: the brain (and the heart...but mostly the brain).
"My future is not dependent of how high or low I can sing: it's dependent on the quality of the sound. Timbre, clarity, clean/not 'airy', you get me. I went to vocal lessons to train my throat but only after my brain understood the cocktail of tools necessary to make sure my cricoid is tilted the right amount for the vowel and so forth. Drop it guys, I've got this."
[ALT: a starry night sky with a row of tree silhouettes across the bottom of the frame.]
And wouldn't you know it, years after having to justify my choice for the millionth time, I turned out to be right. It did take some time, though. For the first bit, I didn't sing much since my voice was trying on different registers to find out which one was the best for it to sit in permanently moving forward. It's "new normal". In the meantime, I became familiar with the other part of musical duets that I never listened to before because it would give me dysphoria before I even knew what the word meant. Grieve your old idols, find new ones. Remember you can always listen to find techniques everywhere, so it's not a waste of time to sing both.
Once my voice began to decorate the walls around its new register, I got in the car alone after dark, found an empty park/trail, got out of the car and started. Slowly - ten minutes at a time. Warm-ups, then one song at mid-volume (you're not gonna belt for some time, kid). A simple tune, that wouldn't take much out of my middle register to try. I made a playlist of songs that would stretch my range from the inside (middle range) to the outside (higher and lower) over a couple of weeks at a time (during Ride The Cyclone I wasn't fully back to my whole voice so, I'm actually embarrassed at how I sounded in that show - live, laugh, love) in non-drastic increments.
The notes that felt intimidating or difficult to do at mid-volume I would try to do at a whisper, as different vowels, with different consonants before them, etc. It's even more difficult to cleanly sing at a whisper for me than any other way, so I started there a lot of the time because by the time I've mastered it that way, singing it louder and with a different part of my throat becomes much easier to access and at times helps me dodge the panic attack of, "WHY CAN'T I SING THIS NOTE THAT WAS ONCE EASY FOR ME" as well as be a lovely surprise to one day go from imagining myself singing along to something to just suddenly, healthy doing it like I used to.
Admittedly I did cry a couple of times during the process, but when I look back at first puberty, I cried so much MORE back then. But I didn't feel at all like I was starting from scratch, or that I was ruined. My brain remembers how to sing healthily, and I care so much about that that I made sure to never forget it. It was scary to try to prove to myself that I still remembered how to work through difficulties singing, and I wasn't always patient with myself. But remember to take breaks instead of pushing yourself. This is a delicate time for your throat, I wouldn't suggest singing with the same (or more) amount of effort/push/energy as before HRT right away, if you hurt yourself it'll take even longer to get to where you want to go.
I don't know if this made any sense to anyone, I'm sorry if it didn't, I'm just trying to help.
p.s. DO NOT DRIVE TO A PARK ALONE AT NIGHT TO PRACTICE SINGING YOU COULD GET KIDNAPPED OR WORSE I WAS DUMB BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD BE FIND SOMEWHERE PRIVATE AND SAFE
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