It's hard to believe that it's only been one year since I launched my first e-course, Trans Vocal Exploration. So much has happened in the past twelve months, and my life and work are so completely different that it feels like a lifetime ago.

Last week, I posted a blog post with an overview of everything I currently offer (which has been released in the past year, if you can believe it!) but today I wanted to focus on my inaugural course, Trans Vocal Exploration: Feminization, Masculinization, and Voice Beyond the Binary. 

Back in December of 2020, I quit my part-time job and decided to focus entirely on teacher. At the time, I was teaching both trans voice lessons, as well as singing, songwriting, theory, musicianship, etc. However, between January and May of 2021, interest in my trans voice lessons and workshops started gaining outweighing interest in my music lessons. In May of 2021, I posted my first TikTok and and it went instantly viral!

@reneeyoxon cisnormativity, take a hike! #transvoice #transvoiceteacher #transvoicesheard #transvoicesarebeautiful #nonbinary #theythem #voicefeminization ♬ original sound - Renée Yoxon (they/them)

Interest in my lessons exploded and I quickly realized that I would never be able to meet the demand with my one-to-one private lessons.

Up to that point, I had been averse to creating online courses because I believed that my value as a teacher rested solely upon my ability to help individual students. However, since I had given roughly 30 workshops in the first half of 2021, I noticed that many students only wanted to learn the information from me and then work on it in private. Even though only a fraction of the attendees were participating in front of the group, the feedback from these workshops was still very good. This feedback gave me the push I needed to create my first online course, Trans Vocal Exploration.

I poured everything I knew up to that point into this course, and as I continue to learn more, I update the course to reflect that.

So, one year later, what have students had to say about this course?? Here are some of my favourite reviews:

"I'm enjoying the course. I feel like I've developed some pitch and resonance control and really just need to strengthen my muscles to keep it up more because my voice gets tired right now and starts to drop as a result. Overall I think I'm at the point of also trying to get it to sound more natural as well which I'm sure will come with practice."

“I had so many ah-ha moments during this course: learning about the importance of resonance, visualizing the parts of the vocal tract as I speak, thinking about inflection and listening for the drop. Since beginning the course I have been able to maintain target resonance more consistently as it's easier to move the muscles physically in the correct way.”

“Trans Vocal Exploration has been unexpectedly healing. Creating the little craft for my name and giving myself some love with the warm up has opened my eyes to myself. I'm very excited about what's to come. I have already experienced a greater awareness of myself and the way I use my voice every day.”

“Trans Vocal Exploration helped me to understand resonance and see how much of an impact it has compared to pitch. It gave me hope to be able to have variation and still pass! I loved the actual working tips and the help with the mentality.”

"I've been enjoying Trans Vocal Exploration. I thought I was getting a voice lesson only, but it came with a side of yoga =) I seriously love the stretching and warm ups. Having a good routine helps me a lot! It's nice to have all the structure involved so far and I remind myself that even though I may not be close to my target voice yet, all the work adds up.”

Thank you so much to everyone who has given me their feedback about the course! I my courses to be exactly what you need and your feedback helps me to do that! If you are looking for more information about Trans Vocal Exploration, you can find that here.