I'm commonly asked during consultations ' how long does gender affirming voice training take and how long until I reach my goal voice?' and the answer is actually pretty straight forward. For the vast majority of people, 8 sessions is all it takes (to really be specific, 8 to feminize and 6 to masculinize). At this point people tend to look at me with a bit of shock and mention how they were expecting me to say that it would take years. Luckily for them, my 10+ years of teaching experience makes me confident in saying I'm damn good at my job (said in the most humblest of tones haha) Now, the 8 sessions comes with a small asterisk. You need to be doing the 30 minutes of daily homework practice between sessions since how can we expect to grow and develop muscles and coordination without practice? Provided you're doing that, you're golden. In terms of what we cover during those sessions, it varies. This is because I don't offer a one size fits all curriculum, that's not what quality voice training is about. All voices are unique in terms of their skills and abilities and all bodies respond to the stress of learning differently. Given this, after years of classroom experience, I've become exceptionally skilled in the art of adapting lessons to what you and your voice needs on each given day (and in some cases that even means accelerating your learning). Overall though there's some topics you can expect we'll cover, these include: resonance, pitch, vocal weight, mannerisms (coughing, laughing, sneezing etc...), patterns of speech, changing the placement of the sound and a few others. One thing that also helps to reduce the number of sessions required is the fact that I'm not just walking you through exercises, I'm teaching you what were doing and how each and every thing is impacting your voice. Again, after being a classroom teacher for as long as I have, I learned very quickly that when students truly understand the content they can more easily extend their knowledge and apply their skills, if you're curious about this phenomenon look up Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK), its fascinating and makes so much sense (if you're not an education nerd however, you might find this dry af, sorry haha). Here's another takeaway, when you're looking for a voice coach and you ask them 'How Long Does Gender-Affirming Voice Training Actually Take?' and they say you need to commit to weekly sessions for months or 20+ sessions, etc... run away screaming, they either don't have a firm grasp on trans voice training or they do and they're just robbing you blind, either way not good! At the end of the day my goal is to give you your dream voice within a couple of months and for the least amount of money as possible. As trans folk, we have sooooo many things in our day to day lives that add stress, challenge our sense of safety and erode our quality of life. Coming from experience I know just how draining this process can be, so believe me when I say, I truly care about making voice training one of those few things that you don't need to worry about. I'm here to develop your vocal skills, boost your confidence and protect your wallet. If you have any questions about anything at all, don't hesitate to reach out, you know where to find me. All the best, Kylie