Interview with Trans Voice Teacher Renee Yoxon
What a joy to chat with Trans Voice Teacher Renee Yoxon last night! It was great to hear how their passion for teaching began, and how they see the future of gender affirming education changing!
Check out a transcript below!
Inspired to start trans voice lessons? Book your lesson below!
- Hey everybody. It's me, Olivia Flanigan with another installment of Lovely Cup and I'm super excited for tonight, 7:00 p.m start time, very close to my bedtime. But today I'm really excited to be chatting with Renée Yoxon. I hope I'm saying their name right, who is a trans voice teacher and also a singer and so I'm really excited to talk with them so I'm going to get them in here. Hi Renée.
- Hi Olivia, how are you?
- Good, how are you?
- I'm good, nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you. I find it's best to meet people, live on the internet, you know what I mean? I think so. Yeah, I agree.
- It's important to, perform as I'm getting to know you. Thank you so much for doing this with me.
- Not a problem.
- This is awesome. So I, of course, I found you on the internet where we are right now and I just was like, "Oh my gosh, we have a lot in common." We're both doing trans voice stuff and you're a great singer as well. So I just was curious to hear some stuff from you and how you have kind of found your way and doing what you're doing now.
- I'm excited to talk about it.
- Amazing. So you are up in Canada, no?
- Yeah, I'm in Montreal.
- Montreal. And you know that we down here in America, we don't know anything about Canada at all.
- Some people do.
- No, nobody knows. I know literally nothing about Canada, but tell me about, tell me a little bit, so you're a singer, like, did you study music in school? Did you come up kind of in music?
- Yeah, yes and no. I was like, deeply into a jazz when I was in high school, but after high school I went and got a degree in physics.
- Oh.
- But then after that I left science to study, well just to pursue music, basically. I made a bunch of albums and then at age, like I think I was 26, I went back to school and got a jazz degree followed by a Master's in songwriting. So I did all that education, it took like 10 or 12 years and then I finished my education in 2019, so now it's 2022.
- That's really cool. Wow, so you have both like a science and a music background, which is great for trans voice stuff, I feel like.
- It's really useful.
- Yeah, that's so cool. What kind of stuff were you, what kind of science stuff were you interested in?
- I mean, I don't know. I was getting a physics degree. I got like a, I did most of an experimental physics degree and then got a general one in the end, but it was like a very applied physics degree, so there's a lot of programming and a lot of mechanical engineering and stuff like that, which I think is what makes me a strong business person actually, because I'm not afraid to like, learn how to code something if I need to or learn to use a new tool or, and it makes me a good teacher cause I'm just resourceful as heck. I'll learn how to do something no matter what.
- Yeah and I mean, not to mention musician stuff too, that you're kind of like in the moment and especially jazz stuff too. I feel, you know, that is so cool. So I also went to jazz school. I don't know if you knew that.
- I did not know that.
- Yeah, I went to jazz school.
- Sorry.
- Yeah, so I'm suffering, I'm suffering the same consequences you are, but that's so cool, so then you were teaching, like, were you doing a lot of teaching, singing and then kind of got into trans voice?
- Yeah, so I taught just singing for like a dozen years or so and I mean, do you wanna hear the whole story? I mean, it's kind of.
- Yeah. I wanna hear every detail every detail.
- Yeah. So I went to get my masters in songwriting and while I was there, I sort of honed in on what I wanted to be as a teacher. And I decided I really wanted to teach specifically transgender and disabled people because I identify as both trans and disabled. And I just felt like there weren't that many teachers who like really understood what was needed in order to be sensitive to that population. So, but I also know that those populations, like don't traditionally have a lot of disposable incomes to spend on luxuries, like singing lessons. So I made a scholarship program called The Right To Sing Award, which I just raised some money for and started advertising for participants and for donations and things like that, and then an organization here in Montreal called Project 10, which is an organization for trans youth. They saw my ads for the Right To Sing Award and they just cold emailed me and asked me if I could come and teach a workshop on trans vocal exploration. I was actually their phrase. I know it seems my workshop and my E-course, but they asked me for that specifically, because they had had like some cisgender speech language pathologists who were very knowledgeable I'm sure but like, didn't have like, a little more of open concept of like what gender can be, which is sort of the mandate of Project 10. So they wanted somebody who was trans basically to come in and do that workshop. And I had never heard of trans voice work. I mean, I'm sure, like I had heard of it, but I had never considered it as a career path for me. But when I was asked to do this workshop, I was like, yes, this sounds amazing. Exactly, I would love to. And then I just had such a great time that I've never stopped.
- That's so awesome. That's great that like, you're just starting to, you put something else out there and then something else comes back to you that.
- Yeah. Energy.
- Yeah. Amazing. That's so cool. So you've got your course that you, so were you teaching just private lessons before that, before you did your course and stuff?
- Yeah. So I taught privately, and the singing teacher for a long time. And then I did this workshop for Project 10 and because they serve all of Montreal, they were getting like students who are asking for this service all the time. So they would send me private students constantly. And it wasn't until last may when a TikTok of mine blew up that like, I just couldn't take on the number of students who were requesting private lessons for me like it was just ridiculous. So I decided then to make the course so that I could like quickly get the information to as many people as possible while also having a living, you know?
- Yeah.
- So that's what made me make the change, from private lessons to e-courses.
- That's really cool. So what do you feel like, do you feel, 'cause I was checking like your website and your course, and so it looks like you have like office hours kind of a thing with people who buy the course too. So, and I'm just curious, how has it been going with having the course and the office hours, like, do you feel like it's, I don't know, just like, just the differences between like having private lessons every week and that like pluses and minuses, if there.
- Yeah, yeah, totally. I was like really hesitant to make an e-Course when I first decided that was what needed to happen because I had always had a pretty strong belief that like every individual needs individual attention and this sort of comes from like wanting to teach trans and disabled people. Like the whole idea behind that ethos was like, those people need, each individual story needs to be heard in order for the student to be like completely served properly. And so when I thought about making this e-course I was like, I don't know, It just seems like I'm whole cloth creating a solution that's not going to fit everybody and I don't like that, but I decided to do it anyway be because I realized that if I made a waiting list for my services as a private teacher, then I was just another part of the problem, like there was just going to be,
- Yeah.
- It was just gonna be another waiting list that trans people
- Sure. Have to wait on and I was like, not into that. So I did the office hour thing, so that at least once a month, people can come and ask their individual questions and there have been quite a few people who will show up and like show me an exercise, to get personalized feedback. And I really love it, it's like just one hour a month. It's really not a lot. And unfortunately I can't like record the call and put it online because of privacy reasons, like What's kind of what distinguishes my e-Course from like every other, just whatever e-Course out there is, this privacy thing. But I am looking for like more and more solutions to how to like give that personal feedback wherever possible, like within the means that I have.
- Yeah. That's really cool. That's great. I think that I definitely understand that kind of like waiting list it's like we don't need another barrier, especially with yeah, prices. I think about that a lot in my own work 'cause I just do, I don't offer like bundles or anything. I just basically just do the model of a private studio. I also have singing students and piano students and songwriting stuff and so, yeah. So I'm just like, I'm fascinated by everybody's.
- Yeah. It's challenging, like with the sliding scales, but you can also like offer shorter lessons or you could like, have a wait like a waiting list for a certain number of free lessons per month. And then everybody else pays their normal fee. Like it's hard to find ways to accommodate everybody while also like respecting your time and valuing what you have as a service. It's a challenge.
- So with all this, like performing and writing background, like did you know that you wanted to be a teacher? Was that like a huge passion from a long time? Or is this something that came later?
- Yeah, it wasn't something I thought about when I was early in my music career. Wasn't like, you know, some people, like, I know I wanna be a teacher, like when I was younger, that was not the case, like I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to make records and perform, but then I developed chronic pain pretty early in my life. Like in my twenties, early twenties, I'm 34 now. And like more and more performing became less desirable for me as a career. And even now like, I don't perform at all. I mean like, you know, pandemic, notwithstanding, I don't do any performance because the cost benefit analysis, like just doesn't add up, and I never know what I'm gonna have a flare or not. So it's like a very time dependent career and to say nothing of travel and couch surfing and all these things, like it just wasn't an accessible career to me. So early on I started teaching and I just found that I not only like it, but I'm really good at it. Like I think I get this from my mom, like the ability to connect with anybody. Like my mom could befriend anyone, you know? And I think I get that quality from her. Finding that thing in a person that makes them connect with you and being able to like really understand their perspective. I realized early that that was something I was skilled at. And then I just became addicted to teaching. There's nothing better than solving that problem for somebody. And even if you think for a second, you can't do it. Like they come to you with a problem, you're like, how I'm I gonna solve, and then you find the answer, it's like witchcraft. It just feels like you cast a spell on someone.
- Yes.
- So good.
- Yeah. Well, I mean, that's amazing because I think that there's a lot of teachers in the world who are not as passionate about teaching. I think it's a tough thing. And there can be a lot of, burnout and a lot of, because that one on one time is so intense, like an hour of like engaging and so it's a lot of effort.
- Totally. So you have to wanna be there for sure.
- Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So like what do you feel? What do you feel about like being a musician? Do you think that there are things about being a musician that you bring to this work that's maybe different than like a speech language pathologist at all?
- Yeah. You know, I've been talking to speech language pathologists about this recently because I'm in communications with the University of Montreal and working like a building a course, a unit within a course for speech language pathologists.
- Awesome. So like, yeah. It's like, I'm really excited about the collaboration 'cause I want more of our education to like be in their programs. 'Cause a lot of SLP programs don't contain any trans voice education or very little and that's because the voice is like, well, so this is, here's the first main difference between a voice teacher or a musician who sings.
- Yeah.
- And SLP, like SLPs only study the voice as a small part of their study, right? They do other things, they have like cancer screening and feeding and swallowing and yeah. And speech impediments and things like that. Like there's so much more to SLP study than just the voice. Whereas we like singing teachers and singers specifically only study the voice. So that makes us like uniquely qualified to, to understand like specific vocal issues in a way that even SLPs might not, right? I mean, I think that like I could see a good, it could be good if those two communities could like communicate more with each other. I think like we both have a lot to learn from each other. I would really like to learn more about the SLP perspective of trans voice and anything else I'm probably missing. But yeah, like being a performing singer especially, really taught me a lot about what my performing students required, like from a singing teacher and then neither performing more. But I've learned so much about the voice through performance and through teaching and especially doing the two simultaneously. that now I have this huge wealth of information that I'm able to bring to my trans voice students. It's great.
- Yeah. I wonder too, like as singers and singing teachers, there's so much like emotional stuff with, I mean obviously, well I don't have any emotions personally, but yeah, there's so much, when you're working on a song or if a person comes in, like, I'm sure you've had students where they come in and they're like, I just am really nervous to even speak in, maybe public speaking. And I just wanna work on singing to try and open up and you can work through emotional barriers in singing lessons that can really help in trans voice lessons that maybe speech language pathologists maybe are not working in that vein as much, not that they're.
- Yeah. I don't know. To be honest, I really don't know it. 'Cause I personally have never worked with an SLP. So I don't know like how much they deal with the emotional side of things.
- Yeah.
- I think even within music teaching, singing teachers specifically are the ones who will allow emotions in their studio more than others. Like I definitely have known trumpet playing people who, if you like start sniffling in your trumpet lesson, they're like, bye here's a tissue, get out. But singing, we recognize that like the voice is so personal and it comes from literally within us and it's so revealing, it's so vulnerablizing that to not address the emotional side of things, you would be remis, Like as you would lose a huge part of what the practice is even revolving around, like what are the things that are preventing you from practicing every day? I mean, in trans voice, especially like if you're not dealing with the emotional side of things, you're really, really missing a big piece of the puzzle.
- Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I think that there's a great connection there.
- Yeah. Totally.
- To say the least. So what are the, so I know that you're also teaching teachers too. That's a big thing, so I mean that's probably, is that similar too to like maybe what you're doing with the university? Like, is that course like more geared toward people who are gonna be teachers or.
- Yeah. So the course you're talking about is learn to teach trans voice alteration in five weeks, which is such a mouthful of a title, but very descriptive.
- That's a lot of words. Yeah.
- And I started it because I was still receiving after I launched the course, many requests for private lessons. And like, it's just silly. Like this is a service that can and should be widely available. Like it there's just no reason for it to be so challenging to find a private teacher. So I decided to make more teachers that I could like then recommend to people, right? Cause I just didn't like wanna say, oh sure, go see so and so when I didn't know what their politics were, I don't know if we align on our, whatever, there's lots of reasons why I may or may not wanna recommend a teacher to a specific student. So I created this training program to help other teachers who were like me, were singing teachers make that pivot into teaching trans voice alteration because I mean, I'm sure you're aware, like it's a competitive environment being a singing teacher. Like there are so many singing teachers and it's challenging to build up your studio and you have to really find like your niche. But it's not competitive to be a trans voice teacher. There are none like come into the field, please. We need more people. So I just decided to like start to do that, to fix that problem in the field. And we did one cohort last year and now, the registration is open for my second cohort, which is starting next week. And we already have a bunch of people signed up, which is really exciting. And a lot of people who are already trans voice teachers, which I think is really fascinating. Like I'm a little nervous actually, to like to have people who are already doing the work in my course, taking this training, I'm excited. Well, it's awesome. I think I wanna think about signing up myself because I think that it's being in the private, you've got your books, you've got who you learned from, you've got whatever and then you've got experience one on one with people. So it's like, you never get to see what other people are doing. There is a real lack of, I always feel like, I hope that was good. Or, I'm just like, you know, you're like, I, I hope I'm getting this right.
- Totally.
- 'Cause there's a billion different approaches or different exercises or we've all encountered different people and different learning styles and whatever. So I think that's amazing. I think that's great.
- Yeah. I'm really excited. And the collaboration with the SLP, it's like the same material but because I don't know, like SLP are governed much more strictly than voice teachers. Like I'm sure you're aware, like you don't need to register anywhere to be a singing teacher. SOPs, like there's like a governing body within every state or province or whatever. So here, like in Quebec you need to be registered with the funny, I don't know so there's like a whole governing body of SLTs. Well, yeah, but like the thing is they need to have their the material that they learn, like carefully monitored. So like I can't just walk in and teach whatever, I have to do it in collaboration with the head of the program kind of thing.
- Okay, cool.
- I hope it'll be the same. I hope that I don't have to take out any of the things that I'm teaching, that would really inform my work. But yeah, it's interesting to see how that will change. And one thing that they're actually worried about is if like they take on too much of what I'm teaching as SLP material, that then I will have to be a registered SLP in order to teach it. You know what I mean? So they're like, we don't wanna get you in trouble.
- Right. Yeah.
- It's funny, it's complicated.
- Yeah. Well, I mean, that's really inspiring and awesome because I think, I mean also I feel like that should be a part of music ed programs, That should be a part of coral education. I was talking to a girlfriend of mine who is a coral teacher, I was just like, you need to talk to us about this because it's not going away and we need to all figure it out a little bit. It shouldn't be this, just like you're saying, this super specialized, like we should all be sharing this info.
- Absolutely. Oh, I'm just gonna turn the burner off. Sorry. I'm cooking a stew while I'm on this live.
- What kind of stew are you making over there?
- Beef and barley?
- Wow. That sounds like some old school deliciousness.
- It's winter here, very cold. Not today, but in general it's pretty cold. Nice warm stew.
- Yeah,
- But like I was having a live just last week and one of my students from the last cohort has like 20 years of teaching experience. She's an amazing singing teacher, Cassie Coleman. And she was saying that like, this information does need to be in music ed because what music teacher isn't going to encounter a trans student at some point? Especially a coral instructor. When you dealing with like huge groups of people, like guaranteed, there will be a trans person in every choir, like from here till the end of time. So I really hope to see more and more of that happening. And in fact, I was really lucky to give a guest lecture for the music ed department at McGill university, which is another university here. And like they're in the process of reshaping their music ed program to include more of this. So that's like, all good signs for the future.
- Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. That's definitely something to think about for all of us, so great. Well, okay. So you're a business minded person, you're going after it. And so what, what do you kind of see for your business moving forward? Like or if you have ideas or I don't know, I'm just curious, to hear.
- Yeah, let's see. I dunno, I have some ideas. Like I really wanna make a directory of teachers like that include the past cohort and the new cohort so that I can keep it updated with like teachers who are taking on students and who are trained by me, that I can then send to people. So when like some it's just as a resource, so that's something I really wanna create for my business, but I wanna make more courses. Like, I definitely wanna make a course for trans people on testosterone who are interested in continuing to sing through those testosterone changes.
- Yeah.
- It's not something I have like so much experience in. So I've been a little hesitant in going ahead full throttle with that course. And then also I was diverted a little bit because I was commissioned to make a course for an organization in Toronto culture born health. And so I'm making a six week feminization course called Mindful Voice Feminization, which deals way more with the feeling side of things than my trans vocal exploration course even does. Like this was based on some feedback I received from the trans vocal exploration course. And normally I don't like to separate like feminization and masculinization because I see them as two sides of the same coin and like to learn anything about changing the voice makes you a stronger person when it comes to voice modulation. But we also have to sort of deal with the SEO of it all. Like people are searching for voice feminization at the end of the day. So I wanted to make a course specifically for people searching for that. So, yeah, I've got a lot of little things in mind.
- That's awesome.
- I don't want it to grow too big. I like my business to be nice and small so that I can just run it just me, this tiny little business.
- Yeah. That you're in not kind of like becoming a manager of.
- Yeah, I don't wanna become like the Netflix of trans voice courses, but I could see like more collaborative ventures happening. Like I would love to make, I don't know, I was approached by a voice acting marketplace website about doing some kind of collaboration and I have no idea what that will look like or if it'll even happen. But I really love the idea of like doing collaborative.
- Yeah.
- E-courses with people based on different specializations. Like I just think there's no end to where this could go.
- Yeah. That sounds really cool. I think that that's a great way to not get too separated from the work, because I think that that can happen really easily that you become the big boss and then you're kind of, that's something else. So I think that's really cool.
- Yeah. That is easy to happen. Like I haven't been teaching privately since may and I do miss it. It's very strange not to teach privately any more, but now I do workshops. And so I still get that like taste of the one-on-one, the face to face instruction, but you're right. Like I do wanna do take steps to like stay really grounded in the work, do trainings of my own, like whatever voice trainings are available out there. I wanna take them too.
- Yeah. That's really cool. Well, I really appreciate you chatting with me today. This has been so great pleasure. I've just been checking your stuff out online and I've just been very inspired by everything that you're doing. And I checked out a bunch of your recordings today, your singing and you have the most beautiful voice.
- My gosh, thank you. I'm just like not sure if I'll ever go back to making CDs, like making albums and doing that kind of thing. But I do have a full album, like written that I made during my master's degree and just never put out, so maybe someday.
- Put it out, dDon't keep us waiting.
- We'll see, you know how it is, big project.
- Yeah, no, I loved the original stuff and I thought your like straight ahead stuff was awesome. I listened to you singing, exactly like you, it's like, it was like on YouTube somewhere.
- Yeah. That was like a little house party sure.
- Honestly, it sounded awesome. I love that song.
- Thankyou.
- That Dorothy Fields wrote the lyrics to it.
- I dunno. Yeah.
- Yeah. One of the few women who contributed to the American song really. In terms of writing. Anyway, I love that too. Anyway, this is it. This is all I have, this is it.
- Well, thank you for inviting me to do this, this live. I know I was hard to pin down for a while, sorry. Still working out the systems to get the business to run without me dropping the balls all the time, so.
- Not a worry at all. I'm just happy that it worked out.
- Well thank you. Yeah, now we are gonna be friends and colleagues for life I'm sure.
- For life it's permanent. If you go Instagram live with somebody, it's permanent.
- That's it?
- This is it.
- Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Olivia. I really appreciate it.
- Thank you Renee. Hope to talk to you soon.
- Yeah. Have a good night.
- All right. Bye Bye.
- Bye.