My wife Lacy was in a car crash in April of 2020. Well, not so much a car crash as a car winging her at a crossroads at 54mph. She hit the pavement so hard it fractured parts of her throat and collarbone. Her left arm broke in three places. It was brutal.
As I stayed with her and her family in the hospital, we had plenty of worries. She had a serious concussion, and we were anxious it might lead something permanent. The doctors kept talking about the use of her left arm and her fine motor skills. It was only one single nurse who touched upon what would turn out to be the most permanent damage; her throat.
At first, the doctors just told her not to speak. We were told she had to rest and regain her strength, so there would be no speaking for weeks as her throat healed. She also had to wear a sort of neck brace, this awful-looking metallic thing. She was in desperately low spirits, but so very thankful for everything we did.
As the weeks turned to months, most of her fractures and broken bones healed; but not her throat. Lacy still couldn’t talk, no matter how much she tried.
I remember once when we stood in the kitchen. I looked her in the eyes and told her I loved her, and all she could say back was this wheezing whistle. She had some sort of panic attack and locked herself in the bathroom, trying to scream.
We went through a lot of trouble trying to restore her voice. Hour after hour of strenuous exercises. She even had a few minor surgeries. At one point, Lacy started drinking this sort of home remedy from something she learned online. She got stomach cramps for about three days afterwards. No wonder though, most of that “recipe” was just rosemary, olive oil, and some bullshit flower extract you could order online.
The result was always the same. Lacy locked herself in the bathroom and cried. A parade of disappointment.
I grew impatient seeing her despair over and over, so I joined her in a hunt for a treatment. But it had to be something guaranteed. I couldn’t bear to see her disappointed again. Trying to find something to restore a broken voice is close to impossible online. Just sorting through the scams is a full-time job. Whenever I had a few minutes over at work I would post in forums and check search alerts. I had to open a second e-mail account just to handle the sign-up spam.
I got a few earnest responses, but most of it just linked to dead-ends or holistic nonsense. There were a few genuine responses with links to articles, experi
... keep reading on reddit ➡I'm a transwoman who's only dabbled in voice training before. I've found the whole thing really intimidating as it seems super hard, most of the time I just go about my day not saying much at all. However, recently one of my very close online friends said that their family was looking to visit my country during the summer, and suggested that we should meet up.
He knows that I'm trans, something I tell very few online friends, so he's definitely someone that I trust, but I would feel a little awkward hanging out with him sounding like I do now. As much as he assures me that it's fine, I would like to attempt to get a decently passable voice until we get the chance to meet, so I was wondering if this is a possibility at all?
I'm not expecting my voice to be perfect by any means, of course, just one that sounds decently natural and that I wouldn't be embarrassed to use in public. Is it possible, and if so, where should I start?
UPDATE: The AMA is now CLOSED! Thank you so much for all your questions, I typed as fast as I could! Stay tuned to my twitch stream and my youtube channel; I hope to try to tackle some of these questions in a different format if I can't get back to the AMA here.
THANK YOU for supporting my Kickstarter! I cannot wait to make this album for you!
FEAR THE DEER! BACK THE SAX!
I'm JOE ZIEJA, the voice of Claude in Fire Emblem: Three Houses! I'm also Kickstarting my THREE HOUSES: FOUR SAXES jazz tribute album until Sept. 30! ASK ME ANYTHING!
I'm not only the voice of Claude in Fire Emblem: Three Houses & Fire Emblem Heroes, but also the voices of Canas and Jamke in Fire Emblem Heroes, along with lots more games and anime. I even voiced Fox McCloud a few years ago for Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins.
Why am I here? I'm also Kickstarting a jazz tribute album called THREE HOUSES: FOUR SAXES! Music was my first love and I could really use your K-Support and word of mouth for this album campaign right now!
The first music video, "Life at Garreg Mach", is already done!
(The Kickstarter ends September 30th at 4:44 PM Pacific time, so I hope you're with me for it. THANK YOU!)
Please ASK ME ANYTHING! (Here's my PROOF!)
I'll definitely be answering questions Wednesday, September 15th from 12-2 PM Pacific time (3-5 Eastern), but I may be able to come back to more Qs to give more As, so please keep your questions coming!
BTW, I'm currently in the middle of a Twitch playthrough of FE: Three Houses, so any questions about the game itself are welcome!
Follow me for more!
... keep reading on reddit ➡
My brother says I do a solid impression when I said "It's time for brake at flake"... I don't think I do
Edit: My impression of Four will probably be a little bit off but that's because I have a cold, also I'll get to these soon!
Edit 2: The video is up, if I didn't say your comment it's because I didn't know what way I should've said it in or it was just something I couldn't nail
https://twitter.com/sonicmega/status/1440842826795733000
Tweet Text:
Mark your calendars! In just under 3 days, I (voice of Rean Schwarzer) will be streaming a MARATHON SPEEDRUN of all four games in the #TrailsOfColdSteel series! Evil doesn't sleep, so neither will I; I can't STOP streaming until ALL FOUR GAMES are beaten! http://twitch.tv/sonicmega
Need another great reason to stop by, support, and possibly even donate? CHARITY! 50% of ALL earnings from subs renewed/donated during the marathon will go straight to u/KittenRescueLA, which helps train/home felines of all shapes & sizes! (25% of the remainder pays my mods!)
INCOMING WORLD RECORD, BABY
On one side it's 4 + 4 and on the other it's just 4. Is there any fuckery I can do to get this down to one or 1.5 ohm? If I can't do it on my own is there any way I can add something that has resistance that will lower everything down once I have it all wired up?
TLDR: diverse roster >>>> completionist OCD
At least the “Where’s the voice acting?” people have a legit reason to not understand why VA isn’t in the game. They don’t realize the licensing issues. They don’t realize NASB was made on a budget of gum and pocket lint while Nintendo made 4 billion dollars just this year.
Speaking of budget, is that really what you wanna spend it on? Four similar looking, similar bodied, similar playing characters? This could be the only Nick Smash Bros we’ll ever get so I don’t need four slots gobbled up by four anime swordsmen Ninja Turtles.
You’ll hear reasons like:
-
“It's iconic.”
-
“You can’t NOT have all four Turtles.”
-
“They’re brothers!”
And all those reasons boil down to “just because”.
Then they’ll tell you “They’re so similar so it would be easy to make them”. So, you’re admitting you just want four clones?
- “But they’ll play different.”
Okay, so to make them not clones, you want the devs to waste extremely valuable time and budget to try and make them four different characters? Okay, then why don’t we just have four different characters in the first place from four different IPs? The Turtles have become the Fire Emblem of NASB.
It can take FOUR DAYS to create an animation that lasts 5 seconds in Overwatch. How long do you think it'll take to make new animations for two whole new Turtles? Moves include:
-
up light
-
mid light
-
down light
-
air up light
-
air mid light
-
air down light
-
up strong
-
mid strong
-
down strong
-
air up strong
-
air mid strong
-
air down strong
-
up special
-
mid special
-
down special
-
air up special
-
air mid special
-
air down special
-
dash light
-
dash strong
Let's not forget that these animations and hitboxes have to play nicely with the entire rest of the game so that's a ton of playtesting. But yeah, "Lol, they can just copy/paste the Turtles. It'll take no time."
And I’m not a Turtle hater. I love the TMNT franchise but I’m not gonna waste four slots’ worth of time and energy on fou
... keep reading on reddit ➡
"On loving your voice, ep. 2."
I am a trans woman who has been active on r/transvoice. I am an amateur seeking to be a professional, but I have learned a lot. I just want to say, what we are finding in voice these days is that the voice is so much more ductile, varied, multifaceted, and resilient than we in the past gave it credit for. I understand the risk of flak but the discussion of voice types in certain circles is, in my opinion, quite oversimplified and flawed.
I agree that we take on deeply embedded identities around our voices that can be hard to unfold or crack (and aren't always necessary to), but we have to recognize that a 3.5- or four-octave range is simply a voice that has achieved facility in chest and head as well as high and low larynx and manipulating resonance through these. A five-octave voice has developed capacity in the fry or whistle registers (or both), and a six-octave voice has just extended both fully. The average person is found to sing "full-voiced" — a term that denotes cord closure and vibration of the whole vocalis while one register dominates — across two to two and a half octaves, but the full gamut of chest-to-head range is truly around three-and-a-half to four octaves for anyone, with at least an extra octave each or so to add of fry and whistle.
Coloratura soprano voices loft easily into flageolet register, which is essentially full-voiced whistle register, while most soprano voices tend to fly upward and spend a lot of comfortable time in head register while mezzos more in middle register and chest, and contraltos mainly in chest; countertenors function much like sopranos and mezzos and tenors like contraltos (perhaps with more ease in mixing), and baritones spend time in their middle chest register, while basses find resonance in the lower end of it, into fry.
Why note this? Well it's because one finds that every singer carries some potential for facility in all of the registers, because they are simply modes of vibration of the glottis and vocalis. Fry is glottal closure, full fry or fry mix is this plus chest voice, chest voice is the thyroarytenoid muscle vibrating, "mixed voice" (nowadays a contentious term) is chest voice being pulled by the cricothyroid while remaining engaged, head voice is cricothyroid-dominant while retaining the vocalis' full vibration, falsetto is head voice without full eng
... keep reading on reddit ➡
UPDATE: This event is CLOSED! Thank you all SO much for your insightful and wonderful questions. I am so lucky to have so much support from this community. I cannot wait to make this album for you - if you've already donated, thank you so much. If you can't donate, please don't! Just spread the word; that's help enough.
You are all so wonderful and I am so glad to have met you and talked with you for a little bit this evening. Fear the Deer! Back the sax!
I'm JOE ZIEJA, the voice of Claude in Fire Emblem: Three Houses! I'm also Kickstarting my THREE HOUSES: FOUR SAXES jazz tribute album until Sept. 30! ASK ME ANYTHING!
This event is from Thursday, September 16th, 2021 from 8-10 PM PST!
I'm not only the voice of Claude in Fire Emblem: Three Houses & Fire Emblem Heroes, but also the voices of Canas and Jamke in Fire Emblem Heroes, along with lots more games and anime. I even voiced Fox McCloud a few years ago for Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins.
Why am I here? I'm also Kickstarting a jazz tribute album called THREE HOUSES: FOUR SAXES! Music was my first love and I could really use your K-Support and word of mouth for this album campaign right now!
The first music video, "Life at Garreg Mach", is already done!
(The Kickstarter ends September 30th at 4:44 PM Pacific time, so I hope you're with me for it. THANK YOU!)
Please ASK ME ANYTHING! (Here's my PROOF!)
I'll definitely be answering questions Wednesday, September 16th from 8-10 PM Pacific time, but I may be able to come back to more Qs to give more As, so please keep your questions coming!
BTW, I'm currently in the middle of a Twitch playthrough of FE: Three Houses, so any questions about the game itself are welcome!
Follow me for more!
- __[*THREE HOUSES: FOUR S
