What note am I singing? A note game for kids

How to find out what note you're singing

Tap the round button and sing one long vowel, Aaah or Ooo, or hum with your mouth closed. Hold it for the two seconds the microphone listens. Mika plays your note back, says its name and lights its key on the piano under it. Hear it again plays it once more, Sing another one starts the next note. No microphone here, or a shy singer: the example sings a G.

Mika listens like a pitch detector or a tuner and names the nearest key on a piano: one of the white keys C, D, E, F, G, A, B, or a black key such as C♯ (C sharp). A black key has two names: C♯ is also D♭, and the A♯ Mika shows is the B♭ in a songbook. Mika uses the sharp name. If the note sits more than about a third of the way towards the next key, Mika says it is between the two. That isn't wrong: a voice can sing every note between the keys, a piano can't. The glockenspiel plays it in its own high range, from the C above middle C up: a child's note mostly comes back one octave higher, a man's two, and a note that is already that high at the pitch it was sung. The name stays the same.

Games with one sung note

Note ping-pong: one of you sings a note, the other sings it back. Let Mika read both. The same name means the note made it across the table.

Guess the note: a note quiz for two. Sing a note and guess its name before Mika says it. Write the guesses down and see how close they came. Nobody keeps score against anyone else.

Staircase: sing a note, then one a little higher, then one higher again. Write down the three names: that is your staircase. Now sing it back down in the same steps.

The button under the result takes the note into Brumm Kids, where it becomes the first note of a song, with a beat and a glockenspiel, and the child sings a whole tune on top.

For parents and teachers

Good from about four to ten; three minutes is a good go. One voice at a time reads best, so in a class the phone goes round the circle and each child sings a note of the day. The page listens only after a tap, for two seconds, and keeps nothing: no recording, no account, no points, no highest or longest note, nothing compared with other children. More about Brumm Kids.

When the note jumps or nothing shows

• Sing a vowel, not a word: consonants and breaths have no note.
• One voice at a time. Music, the TV and a second child singing along all reach the microphone.
• Hold the phone 20 to 50 cm (8 to 20 inches) away, a little closer for a quiet voice.
• A whisper has no pitch. A soft hum has one.
• If a name looks wrong, sing the same note again. A name that comes back twice is the one to trust.

Note names, octaves and middle C

What note am I humming? The same as if you sang it: a hum and an Aaah on the same pitch are one note, and the page reads both. The seven letters come round again after every seven white keys. The C nearest the middle of a piano is middle C, written C4; the next C up is C5. The number is the octave, and one octave up doubles the frequency. This page names only the letter, because a child and a grown-up singing together sing the same letter, often an octave apart.

Equal temperament, A4 = 440 Hz. Women mostly sing in the children's octave, men an octave below it. The note frequency chart has every note of the piano.

Which notes do children sing?

Songs for young children mostly stay between about D4, the D above middle C, and D5, an octave higher; for the youngest, in a narrower middle (see Smith below). Children who were just learning to sing in tune made the most progress when the songs stayed between middle C and the A above it (Robert Smith, 1963). Many children only sing a whole phrase in tune from about five and a half or six (Lyle Davidson and colleagues, 1981), so a four-year-old's note that wanders is normal, and one held note is the place to start.

Before puberty, girls and boys sing in the same range. A boy's voice drops by about an octave when it changes.

Is C5 a high note for a girl?

For a girl, or any child before puberty, C5 (523 Hz) sits near the top of where children's songs go: inside the range above, and not a note to push for. For a grown woman it is in the middle or upper part of most voices; for a man in his normal voice it is high: C5 is the tenor's high C. Nothing on this page asks for a high note.

Finding the note without an app

With a piano, a keyboard, a glockenspiel or a xylophone: the child sings and holds a note, and a grown-up plays the keys near it, one at a time, until one is the same note, not just close. Two notes that are nearly the same make a slow wobble when they sound together; when the wobble stops, they match. Boomwhackers work the same way, with colours for the letters (the Boomwhacker colours), and on a recorder the fingering says the note (recorder notes for kids).

Questions parents ask

Is there an app that tells you what note you're singing?

This page is a note identifier that tells a child what note that is, and it runs in the phone's browser, Safari on an iPhone or iPad, Chrome on Android, with nothing to install. For older singers practising long notes, apps draw the voice as a line over time: Singscope on iPhone, Vocal Pitch Monitor on Android. The grown-up what note am I singing page shows the note live while you sing, with its octave and how many cents sharp or flat.

Is there an app that can tell me what song I'm singing or humming?

Not this one: it names one note. Google's Hum to Search (in the Google app since 2020) and SoundHound listen to a few seconds of humming or singing and suggest songs. Shazam needs the recorded song itself.

Can it tell me what key I'm singing in?

One note belongs to many keys, so no. A key needs a line of notes: a grown-up can hum a short tune into the singing key finder.

Does it find my child's vocal range?

No, on purpose. A range test asks for the lowest and highest note, and children shouldn't push for either. The vocal range test is for grown-ups; for children, Sing the note and echo singing stay in the comfortable middle.

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