Though she created versions for both transgender men and women, far more of her customers are women, Perez says, because feminizing a voice tends to be more difficult than training it to sound more masculine. In two years, some 10,000 users-a respectable but not staggering number-have downloaded the app. The app-called EVA, or the “Exceptional Voice App”-is based on the audio program and charges $4.99 a lesson. She started receiving so many similar requests that she put together an audio program that sold in 55 countries. Perez was running her private practice in 2000 when she received a call from a transgender woman who wanted help training her voice to sound more feminine. Speech-language pathologist Kathe Perez launched the first such voice-training app in 2013. Now, researchers are developing voice-training apps specifically for the transgender population in hopes of making these lessons more accessible. Weizenbaum has taken private voice lessons from a speech pathologist, but at $1,000 for 11 sessions, those can be prohibitively expensive. “Beyond that, I want to be the one in control of how people understand me, and, well, I was just getting really fed up with the sound of my own voice.” “There are tangible safety benefits to being able to pass as cis when you need to,” says Natalie Weizenbaum, a transgender woman and software engineer in Seattle. who requests we not use her full name.Īfter mobile apps became commonplace, people switched to using electronic tuners, she says, but these only provide an absolute indicator of pitch with no voice-specific feedback.įor transgender women, seeking therapy to modulate to a higher, more feminine voice is about more than identity. “You would go to music stores to get a guitar tuner so you could do your homework and figure out and adjust the pitch you were speaking at,” says Lauren, a transgender woman in Washington, D.C. “It looked like it cost a million bucks, but we did it for only $15,000.For transgender women, the quest for the “right” voice used to begin with a trip to the music store. “Back then nobody had ever seen anything like that in a video before,” says Nova, whose new album, The Life and Times of Eddie Gage, is available now. Reaching a locked door, Nova aims his Les Paul and shoots out a laser beam to get inside the building, after which he performs onstage for awaiting fans. “I never thought the song would be a hit,” he says.Īiding its ascent was an elaborate video that was in regular rotation on MTV, in which the guitarist, clad in a leopard-print jumpsuit, emerges from a helicopter and is led to a warehouse by machine-gun wielding bodyguards. Thanks to its potent blend of sharp hooks, arena-quaking electric guitars and a tight sheen of surging synths, “Fantasy” vaulted its way onto AOR playlists in the early months of 1982, climbing to number 23 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and reaching number three on its Mainstream Rock chart, while the album Aldo Nova quickly went Platinum.īack then nobody had ever seen anything like that in a video before Aldo NovaĪll of which came as a surprise to the man suddenly living out the title of his debut single. The recording led to a publishing deal and then a full label contract with Portrait Records, which gave the young rocker a chance to produce his self-titled debut album. “He made everything sound like cannons,” Nova says of Bongiovi, whose second cousin Jon Bon Jovi would work with Nova in the 1990s. Once Nova finished tracking “Fantasy,” American producer Tony Bongiovi came in to mix. “I wanted it to sound like dueling guitars, like those southern rock bands used to do, so I double-tracked the solo with one on the left and the other on the right.” “I cut the solo on the fly, but I had a plan for it,” he says. “We tried a couple of drummers, but this guy Terry Martel nailed it.”įor guitar tracks, Nova used his favorite Wine Red Les Paul Custom. “I played everything except the drums,” he says. I played everything except the drums Aldo Nova Nova had never recorded a proper demo of “Fantasy,” but as the lucky recipient of a large chunk of free studio time, he operated as his own one-man band. “The people at the studio said I could use his time and do whatever I wanted.” When the guy skipped out of the sessions that had been booked, Nova got his big break. “I told him I wrote, and we started working together.” “He was looking for a songwriter,” Nova says. One night, after performing a club date, he ran into a local musician with a label deal who was recording at Montreal’s Bobinason Studios. Nova’s opportunity to get into a proper studio came about by a most unusual circumstance. (Image credit: Ross Marino/Getty Images) Keys to the Studio
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