Hey there, I’m Jen, a 30yo disabled enby from England. I use She/Her and They/Them pronouns, and I enjoy posting about cats, social issues, and various fandoms.
I make no secret of my past and my disabilities, so be mindful of heavy and potentially trigerring topics.
If you want to chat with me, feel free to send me a message any time. Any donations are appreciated and helpful, since I’m unable to work. PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/JenJensD?locale.x=en_GB
Unfortunately I can no longer answer ask donation posts after being berated and harassed by people who I couldn’t help. I’m sorry but I don’t have anything left to give. I can barely afford to take care of my own family.
It’s my birthday so I’m forcing people on my dash to look at my cat. I can’t afford to blaze it but please look at him. His name is Fionn!
A very kind soul has decided to blaze this post! And if you want to see more of Fionn, check out @fionn-the-cat
Fionn came over to monitor his new fans and learn more about this blaze situation, knocking down TJ in the process
A second Blaze has hit the Fionn post. A new monitoring position is required
There is a third blaze but he can’t get any higher so he went lower
My favourite birthday present this year has been all the wonderful things on this post. Three separate kind souls decided to blaze my baby boy! And so many comments and tags with love and support for my favourite sweet bean. Seeing all the joy and positivity has been amazing. I appreciate every single comment, tag, reblog, reply, and like. You’ve all been amazing and I’m legitimately tearing up thinking of how much love you have sent my boy’s way. Thank you everyone so so much. I love you all!
We have a fourth blaze! I was looking through old pictures of my boy Jake and remembering him and missing him and getting pretty sad. And then I saw the blaze and the continuing influx of support for Fionn and I just honestly feel so overwhelmed right now. Thank you everyone, especially my four blazers, for sharing my sweet boy all over! I’m so happy to see the love! Thank you so much! Have some Fionn on the bed
The first time I saw this video I didn’t reblog or save it anywhere and it’s been genuinely impossible to find again. I searched every variation of “dyke falling apart car bentley review asmr meme” I could come up with on Google and across multiple websites/apps.
Divorce seems to radicalize american men in a way that needs to be studied
A divorced american man will join a right wing terror group because he didnt get custody of the kids he didnt take care of at all
An american man will have an affair with a colleague, get caught, get divorced, and join isis
armchair speculation here but I have two theories:
theory 1: loss of healthy relationships. a person who recently went through any traumatic or emotional experience - a breakup, a death in the family, even just a big move - is a prime target for cults. this is especially true if you don’t have an existing social circle or anything to occupy your time. if your wife was in charge of the social calendar (or was the entirety of your social circle), or your time with your kids is limited to weekends and you don’t see or talk to anyone the rest of the week, or if you have nothing to do when you come home from work other than scroll the internet, then people who make you feel less lonely (and then also give you something to blame for the loneliness you feel) are going to be very alluring.
theory 2: loss of power. these people were already violent and controlling, and losing the objects of their control – namely their wives and/or kids – makes them angry. why did they lose that control? progressive/leftist politics, or feminism in general, or secularism, or whatever other thing they want to blame their loss on. “in the old days, married couples just stayed together and prayed on their relationship if they had problems, but now feminism makes it okay to break up for no reason!” a guy who blames his ex for leaving will target the ex; a guy who blames Society™ for taking away his ex and his kids will target that (though of course there’s nothing stopping him from targeting both at the same time).
it’s entirely possible that there are people who fall under both or neither theory; again, just spitballing here.
Every time I start looking at vocal range videos to try to get back into practice singing I feel like I’m being gaslit.
You search for “songs for women with low voices” and.
Fucking. “Girls just wanna have fun” is on this list.
Bullshit.
A few years ago i had a vocal coach and I had to buy a music book from the store but I didn’t know what would be right so the coach had me sing some Disney songs then walked out of the practice room and grabbed me a book with Hozier songs; unfortunately his highs are WAY higher than mine and most of his lows are on, like, the high end of my low range. The “offer me that deathless death” line in “Take me to Church” is a strain but all the low bits are easy.
This is why I’m feeling a little nuts. Like, I’m looking at baritone songs at this point. “Cellophane” from Chicago is like pretty much the perfect comfortable spot for me.
I should try recording sixteen tons. I can’t hit the low lows in that but I bet it’d still sound rad.
Okay vocal range is complicated. True contraltos are kind of rare, sounds like you might be one, and often time people don’t know what to do with that. I have no idea what ranges look like in pop music, but in musical theater there are plenty of songs that can be sung by altos, just not ones written in the last ten-twenty years. What’s happened in contemporary musical theater is that the words “alto” and “soprano” kind of became words for vocal weight and where the belt range exists. So women who are technically “altos” are being made to belt ridiculously high (something that is harder if not impossible for sopranos) but certainly into what a soprano used to sing and that belt range is kind of defining the alto range even though she’s singing ….the same notes as a soprano. Elephaba and Glinda are actually good examples of this. With the exception of Glindas really high notes in no one mourns the wicked and thank goodness, their ranges are …similar. I’m not saying most singers could sing either part because they’re different voice types and weights, but their ranges are very similar. Also a lot of what people call altos in musical theater are mezzos.
So yeah, kinda you’re being gas lit, is what I’m trying to say.
But there are a lot of songs that are written quite low. Look at “turn back o man” from Godspell and “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” from gentlemen prefer blondes (the ORIGINAL key, not Marilyn’s key which is a little higher) “send in the clowns” from a little night music, maybe “science fiction double feature” from rocky horror picture show. I have a friend who’s a True Contralo, there just ISNT a head voice there. She changes keys on everything and she does struggle with material but she’s a semi professional singer so the material is out there. I’m trying to think what she does, some of those are her numbers. My other advice is look into 20s-40s jazz and American songbook songs. Those are usually written pretty low and they’re not rangy, theyre what I call gentle on the voice.
I wish I had some notes to figure out exactly what range you have, because I do think that if you’re singing baritone songs in the baritone octave you’re dealing with a VERY low voice but there can also be some fear about accessing higher notes and maybe you just don’t know the technique to get to your head voice. I’d also love to know which version of mr. Cellophane is sitting right for you.
I hope this helps! I’m not a voice teacher or anything I just know a lot of musical theater rep and like to help people find good songs.
Oh wow the “there’s no head voice” resonates so hard - I have a really hard break between chest and head and part of why I wanted to go to a vocal coach in the first place was to try to smooth that out (it didn’t really work. yet. I’ll get there someday. It’s better than it used to be).
I’ve got no idea what my top range is (low, like very very low - I do not have a wide range, and where I’m at on the high end now is actually a drastic improvement because of practice) and I’m not a music theory understander, but I remember my vocal coach saying that I was hitting low F when we were doing warmups. I can definitely get lower now than when I was working with her (which would have been in like 2018).
The version of Mr. Cellophane that feels good to me is the John C. Reilly one from the movie, which doesn’t go super deep I don’t think. I can’t hang out in my low end for a whole song so I’d struggle to do a full Type O-Negative cover matching Peter Steele, but it’s hard to find songs that are in, like, a low tenor range. I don’t think I’m actually anywhere close to a baritone, it’s just that my high end is about the same as the high end for a baritone.
This is a song from my band that has some of the lower notes I’ve recorded; it doesn’t cover my whole range but the high note on “before” at 47 seconds is getting very close to as high as I can go. The low on “through” in the chorus (1:10-1:12 and repeated later) isn’t the bottom of my range but I’ve got to be warmed up and practiced to get lower than that and do so in a way that’s clean (in the song it’s raspy with intentionally because it’s a metal song).
If anyone could tell me what those notes are at those time stamps that might actually be really handy.
I’ll look into the jazz standards; a lot of the songs I end up singing to myself and practicing are folk songs that have the same easy-on-the-voice feel.
Thank you for the summons! Professional singer here!
@ms-demeanor The high note is A4 or A above middle C and the low note was F3 or F below middle C. I think you have a very standard “alto” range!
It’s a little hard to hear from the reverb in this recording, but I feel like I can hear a little bit of head voice quality as you go higher. I could very easily hear what it would be like for your voice to release into the head to get a few more notes. And I didn’t hear any difficulty or struggle on those high notes.
I also highly recommend jazz standards and folk songs, or lady rockers. Ella Fitzgerald, Patty Griffin, Joss Stone. Those genres typically don’t go too high. I wouldn’t start singing baritone, though.
The voice is a very complicated and intricate instrument that uses so many tiny muscles. Like any muscle, they need to get used to stretching a certain way and get stronger! You can build a head voice over time.
The simplest way to start smoothing a “break” between head and chest voice is just to do some vocal exercises like sirens! Go from low to high and back down on a “wooooo” sound to get your muscles used to transitioning from chest to head and back.
I’m a tenor so I don’t know as much about alto/mezzo and soprano voices so I’m going to page @currymuttonpizza for further guidance!
hey girl, are you (be cool and edgy) a gun (but not too edgy!) because you’re pretty (great job, you’ve fucked this up already no going back) and i want you in my mouth? (say something british now, that never fails) tally-ho!
prev you are so correct he would absolutely say this and this would be his exact thought process
