Vocal range test
Sing your lowest comfortable note and hold it, then your highest. The test marks both on a piano keyboard, counts the range in semitones and octaves, and tells you which textbook voice type it sits closest to — with the caveats that deserves.
Two notes, about a second each
- 1. Lowest. Sing down to the lowest note you can hold with a clear, steady tone, and hold it.
- 2. Highest. Then up to the highest note you can hold comfortably, and hold that.
- 3. Result. Both notes on a keyboard, your range in semitones and octaves, and the textbook voice type it sits closest to.
A note only counts once you have held it steadily for about a second, so a passing slide or a crack never becomes your result. Warm up first, and never push into pain.
Your microphone is analysed live in this tab. Nothing is recorded, nothing is uploaded, and closing the tab or pressing Stop releases the microphone.
How the vocal range test works
The test listens to your microphone and measures the pitch of whatever you sing, many times a second, using the same detector as the pitch detector. On its own that would be a poor way to find a range, because a voice passes through a lot of notes it cannot really sing: the scoop at the start of a phrase, the crack at the top of a slide, the growl at the bottom. So a note only counts once you have held it steadily for about a second. The progress bar fills while you stay on the same note and empties if you slide away or stop. Vibrato does not count against you: the test averages your pitch over about a fifth of a second, which smooths the natural wobble out.
In each step the test keeps the most extreme note you have held so far. You can creep down (or up) one note at a time, holding each, and the result follows you. If a note went in that you do not trust, retry that step and it is cleared. The microphone is switched off as soon as you ask for your result.
Reading your result
Notes are named in scientific pitch notation: a letter for the note and a number for the octave, which starts again at every C. Middle C is C4, the C below it is C3, and the A above middle C — the orchestra’s tuning note, 440 Hz — is A4. So a range written as “C3 to A4” runs from the C an octave below middle C to the A above it.
A semitone is one key on a piano, black or white. Twelve semitones make an octave, and the test gives your range both ways: 21 semitones is an octave and nine semitones, or 1.75 octaves. It also counts the notes, both ends included, which is always one more than the semitones — the same way there are eight notes, not seven, from C up to the next C.
The six classical voice types
Classical singing sorts voices into a handful of types, each with a conventional range that describes roughly what the repertoire for that voice asks of a trained singer:
- Soprano: about C4 to C6, the highest female voice.
- Mezzo-soprano: about A3 to A5.
- Alto (contralto): about F3 to F5, the lowest female voice.
- Tenor: about C3 to C5, the highest common male voice.
- Baritone: about A2 to A4.
- Bass: about E2 to E4, the lowest.
Notice how much they overlap: every neighbouring pair shares more than an octave and a half. The test compares your lowest and highest held notes with each range’s ends and names the closest, and when two are equally close — common, given the overlap — it names both. Countertenors, men who sing in the alto range using a developed head voice or falsetto, are left out deliberately: a countertenor’s range, roughly E3 to E5, is almost the same as an alto’s on a keyboard, and nothing in two held notes can tell them apart. Choirs use the broader parts soprano, alto, tenor and bass, and generally place singers by range; the six-type scheme above is the finer one used for solo singers.
Why range alone does not decide your voice type
This is the caveat that matters most, and the reason the result is labelled a rough guide. Solo voice types are assigned less by the extremes a singer can reach than by their tessitura — the part of the range where the voice is comfortable for long stretches — together with timbre (the colour of the sound), weight (how light or heavy it is), and where the voice changes register, the transition teachers call the passaggio. Two singers with identical top and bottom notes can be classified differently because one of them is comfortable living near the top of that span and the other is not.
A range test cannot hear any of that. It measures two notes, which is useful — it tells you what you can reach today and gives you a number to track — but a teacher listening to you sing a real song for five minutes will learn more about your voice type than any amount of sliding up and down. If the result surprises you, trust the teacher.
Why ranges vary from person to person
The pitch of a voice is set mainly by the vocal folds: longer, thicker folds vibrate more slowly and produce lower notes, in the same way a longer, heavier string on a guitar sounds lower. At puberty, testosterone makes the larynx grow and the folds lengthen and thicken, which is why most boys’ voices drop by roughly an octave over a few years and why adult male and female ranges sit about that far apart. Within each group, fold size and the shape of the throat and mouth vary from person to person, and so do ranges.
Voices keep changing afterwards. With age, many men’s voices become thinner and sometimes slightly higher as the fold muscle loses bulk, while hormonal and tissue changes often lower women’s speaking pitch. Training changes range too, often most visibly at the edges, where notes that could only be touched in passing become steady enough to hold.
… and from one day to the next
Run the test on three different days and you may well get three slightly different answers. Range shifts with the state of your voice: whether it has been warmed up, how much talking it has done today, a cold, a dry room, not drinking enough. So the useful habit is to test under the same conditions each time — same warm-up, same time of day, same microphone — and to look at the trend over weeks rather than any single result.
Warming up before you test
Five to ten minutes is plenty, and it should feel easy. The exercises most voice teachers and speech-language pathologists reach for are the semi-occluded ones: lip trills (blowing a “brr” through loose lips while voicing), humming, and singing through a drinking straw. Partly closing the mouth or lips creates a little back-pressure that helps the folds vibrate with less effort, which is exactly what you want before asking them to do something unusual. Start in the comfortable middle of your voice, then do slow sirens — gentle glides up and down on a trill or a hum — gradually widening them. Only then go looking for your extremes.
Singing safely at the edges of your range
The notes at the ends of a range are the ones most easily forced, and a range test invites exactly that. Some ground rules:
- Comfortable, not maximum. The test asks for your lowest and highest comfortable notes. If you have to strain, squeeze, or push harder to get there, the note does not belong in your range yet.
- Pain means stop. Singing should never hurt. A scratchy or sore throat afterwards means you pushed too hard; rest your voice and drink water.
- Vocal fry is not a low note. The crackly rattle below your real bottom note is a different kind of vibration, and it does not count as range. The detector often cannot find a steady pitch in it anyway.
- Decide what you are measuring at the top. Many voices can go higher in falsetto or head voice than in full voice. Both are real singing, but if you are curious about voice type, the notes you can sing with a connected, usable tone matter more than the highest squeak.
- Do not repeat it all afternoon. Two or three attempts are enough for one session.
If your voice stays hoarse for more than three weeks, especially without a cold or flu to explain it, see a doctor. That is the standing advice of the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and it applies whether or not singing caused it.
Getting an accurate reading from the microphone
The detector needs a clear, periodic sound, so a breathy or whispered tone may never register however long you hold it. Sing on an open vowel like “ah” or “oo” at a moderate volume, about a hand-span from the microphone, in a room without music playing. A laptop’s built-in microphone is fine for this. If nothing registers at all, the microphone test will show whether the page is hearing you, and the decibel meter shows how much background noise you are singing over.
If you want to practise matching a particular note rather than finding your limits, the pitch detector shows the note you are singing live, with a needle for how sharp or flat you are and a trace of your pitch over time. The tone generator in the sound test will play any frequency to sing against — A4 is 440 Hz, and each octave down halves it.
Where VoiceSnap Pro fits
We build dictation software, which spends its whole life listening to voices through ordinary microphones, and tools like this one are a by-product of that work. VoiceSnap Pro is a voice-to-text app for macOS and Windows: hold one keyboard shortcut, speak, and clean punctuated text appears in whatever field your cursor is in, with every dictation saved to a searchable notes library. It is a one-time $39 purchase rather than a subscription.
It is not out yet, so there is nothing to download today — join the waitlist and you will get a single email when it ships. Meanwhile the browser-based voice typing tool shows what speech-to-text makes of your speaking voice.
Questions people ask
No. The microphone is analysed a fraction of a second at a time inside this tab to measure pitch, and each slice is thrown away once measured. Nothing is recorded or sent anywhere, and the microphone is switched off as soon as you ask for your result.
Your lowest and highest held notes are compared with the conventional classical ranges: bass E2 to E4, baritone A2 to A4, tenor C3 to C5, alto F3 to F5, mezzo-soprano A3 to A5 and soprano C4 to C6. The type whose ends are closest to yours is named, or several when they are equally close. It is a rough guide only: teachers classify voices mainly by tessitura, timbre and where the voice changes register, none of which two notes can show.
A note counts only after you have stayed on it for about a second. Vibrato is fine, because the test averages your pitch over about a fifth of a second. What resets the hold is that average moving more than about half a semitone away (a slide, a crack or a change of note), or a break of more than a fifth of a second, which is what a breath, a tone too breathy or whispered to have a clear pitch, or loud background noise will cause. Sing an open vowel at moderate volume, a hand-span from the microphone, and keep going until the bar fills.
Vocal fry, the crackly rattle below your lowest real note, is not part of your singing range and usually cannot be measured anyway. Falsetto and head voice are real singing, so include them if you want your full range; if you are curious about voice type, the notes you can sing with a connected, usable tone matter more.
Range moves with the state of your voice: how warmed up it is, how much talking you have done that day, fatigue, a cold, a dry room. Test under the same conditions each time, after the same warm-up, and compare the trend over weeks rather than any single result.
Range usually develops gradually with regular, well-guided practice, often by making the notes at the edges steady enough to use. It does not come from forcing extreme notes. A singing teacher is the safest way to work on it.
Yes, if you warm up first, stay at notes you can reach comfortably, and stop at any strain or pain. Two or three attempts per session are plenty. If your voice stays hoarse for more than three weeks, see a doctor.