Hey, trans voice explorers!

On Friday, earlybird registration for my first e-course, Trans Vocal Exploration is finally opening!!

In honour of that special day coming up, I wanted to pay homage to four books that I read during the creation of this course. These are great resources that I absolutely love and will always have a special place in my library. 

The first two books are directed at students and the second two books are directed at teachers. But they're all great resources!

(Just so you know, the links to the books in the reviews below are affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission when you buy through those links. If you can find these books from local bookstores near you, please do so!)

The first book is One Weird Trick: A User's Guide to Transgender Voice by Liz Jackson Hearns with Patrick Maddigan.

Liz Jackson Hearns is a nonbinary voice teacher and the founder of an amazing voice studio that offers singing lessons as well as trans voice lessons out of Chicago. I'm obsessed with everything they've done and written! Liz, if you're reading this, let's please meet someday!!

"One Weird Trick" is kind of a tongue-in-cheek title because, as I'm sure you're away, there is no one trick to create the voice you want. This book is full of great exercises, voice information, practice sentences, and more. This is the book I always recommend that students start with because it's slim and readable.

The next book is The Voice Book for Trans and Non-Binary People: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Authentic Voice and Communication by Matthew Mills and Gillie Stoneham

This book is written by UK-based speech language pathologists Matthew Mills and Gillie Stoneham. These two authors are cisgender (as far as I know) but they've dedicated SO MUCH space in this book so that trans students can speak for themselves about their experiences, good and bad, in their trans voice practice.

This is a bigger book than the previous one so it can feel a little daunting when you start reading it, but it's very well organized with exercises labeled as for voice feminization, voice masculinization, or voice neutralization. There are also really helpful illustrations that come with most exercises.

I learned so much from reading this book and I loved hearing from the students themselves. This book is great especially if you haven't found many people to connect with in your practice. You will definitely not feel alone after you read this!

The third book on my list is Voice and Communication Therapy with Trans and Non-Binary People: Sharing the Clinical Space also by Matthew Mills and Gillie Stoneham.

This book came out shortly after their first book (listed above) but this one is dedicated to voice teachers and clinicians instead of students.

If you're trying to get into teaching trans voice lessons, this is DEFINITELY the book to start with. I would especially recommend this book if you're cis and teaching trans students because there is a lot of really great information well beyond trans 101.

And the last book is The Singing Teacher's Guide to Transgender Voices by Liz Jackson Hearns and Brian Kremer.

This book is geared towards singing teachers and choir teachers that want to be better equipped to work with trans singers.

While this book didn't provide a ton of information for my Trans Vocal Exploration eCourse, I still wanted to list it here because it's an invaluable resource for people who work with trans singers. It's weirdly expensive but if you're in the business of teaching singing, I strongly recommend making the investment.

That's it for now! Thanks for reading! I'm so proud of my little trans voice library that is growing every day. There are still a few books out there that I haven't read so I'll make an updated post when I get my hands on them.

Before I take off I just wanted to remind you that earlybird registration for Trans Vocal Registration opens on Friday!! Eeee! Click here to learn more about the course.