During Puberty - Voice gets deeper and Larynx drops. 20s - Somewhat youthful but getting deeper. 30s - Most people go into a complete adult voice somewhere here. 40s - Solid man's voice.
Men's voices often deepen up to an octave, while women's voices usually move about three tones lower. After puberty and well into older adulthood, some people's voices may change, but not everyone's.
What you might be experiencing is called puberphonia, which essentially is the habitual use of a high pitched voice after puberty. Our vocal folds stretch to make pitch higher and contract to make pitch lower.
In boys, this happens between ages 12 and 16; in girls, between ages 10 and 14. The first sign of puberty in girls is breast development, while in boys it's an increase in the size of the testicles. As this is happening, the voice tends to change as well.
Breathe through your belly
Belly breathing, also known as diaphragmatic breathing, helps you access a deeper pitch. This breathing style lets your diaphragm reach its lowest position, which helps slow down vocal cord frequency. Try standing straight, breathing in deep through your nose, and feeling your ribs expand.
The biggest changes to your voice will happen during puberty and will usually end by the age of 18. Your adult pitch is then reached 2 or 3 years later. But your voice won't completely stabilise until early adulthood. Your voice can carry on changing through your 20's, and even into your 30's.
Between the ages of 18 and 21, your voice stabilizes because the vocal folds and larynx have reached their full growth. While there can be some changes into your 30s, most people's voices are finished with physical changes due to hormones by the age of 21 or so.
Puts' Scientific Reports study found that men with lower formant frequencies—a deeper resonance in their voices—tended to be taller, larger, and stronger. (That's partly because longer vocal tracts and larger vocal folds generate lower, more resonant voices.)
This might lead you to think you should be the next Barry White, but a recent study found that the most attractive male voices were the ones around 96Hz (that's deeper than average, but not incredibly so.) Once this average pitch fell into the 80s, women preferred a higher voice. 2.
Humming is a terrific way to heat up your vocal cords and technique generating a deeper audio. To do this exercise, simply hum a low-pitched audio (such as "mmmm") for numerous seconds, slowly increasing the quantity and size of the hum.
Testosterone will cause a thickening of the vocal chords, which will result in a more male-sounding voice. Not all trans men will experience a full deepening of the pitch of their voice with testosterone, however.
First off, your voice will likely to go through changes after puberty, whether you want it to change or not. Most folks voices become thinner when they get older. What you eat and drink (or especially smoke!) can change your voice. Some medications can have physical effects that change your voice.
It may not surprise you that genetic factors influence vocal quality. After all, voice qualities are largely determined by the size and shape of your larynx, neck, throat and facial structures all determined by genetics. But the influence of environment is too strong to be ignored.
On the flip side, losing weight may lighten your voice if you're a female and deepen your voice if you're a male. If you're not losing a dramatic amount of weight, likely, you won't notice a difference at all in your voice.
The women generally preferred deeper "masculinised" voices to the higher-pitched, more "feminine" recordings. But when the men were saying "I really like you", it was the women who had the highest-pitched voices who had the strongest preference for men with deep voices.
But even then your voice hasn't finished developing! Even after the change that happens in your teens, your voice continues to develop. Although the squeaking and cracking stage doesn't last long, most guys' voices don't fully mature until they're in their twenties.
“We're good at estimating a speaker's age because of physiological changes that happen to all of us irrespective of our first language,” Dr Gnevsheva says. “That is, the deepening pitch of our voices as we age.”
Puberphonia (also known as mutational falsetto, functional falsetto, incomplete mutation, adolescent falsetto, or pubescent falsetto) is a functional voice disorder that is characterized by the habitual use of a high-pitched voice after puberty, hence why many refer to the disorder as resulting in a 'falsetto' voice.
Laryngitis. Laryngitis is one of the most common causes of hoarseness. It can be due to temporary swelling of the vocal folds from a cold, an upper respiratory infection, or allergies. Your doctor will treat laryngitis according to its cause.
So, even if you like how you sound, you might've wondered once if it's possible to change your voice entirely. Well, we're sad to say that permanently altering your voice isn't usually possible.
As much as the growth of the larynx during puberty is inevitable, it's also very individualized. “Not all boys will experience cracking in their voices. If they do, it won't sound the same with everyone,” Djordjevic adds.