Vocal range test

How to find and test your vocal range

To find your vocal range, tap, sing the lowest note that still feels easy on a steady vowel (“ah” works for most), and hold it until the bar runs out (up to four seconds; tap to stop earlier). Then the same for the highest. This vocal range tester reads each held note the way a tuner does and names the nearest piano key, in scientific pitch notation: C4 is middle C, A4 is 440 Hz. It shows your vocal range, the span in semitones and octaves and the closest voice type, and plays your two notes back. So the answer to “what is my vocal range” is two notes and the semitones between them. Comfortable means a note you could sing in a song, not the lowest growl or the highest squeak, because that is the range songs use. For the extremes too, “Add the notes you can just reach” runs two more rounds and shows them lighter on the keyboard.

The keyboard shows the result the way a voice teacher would: the bright keys are your comfortable range, the lighter ones the notes within reach, the dashed bracket the voice type's usual band. Twelve semitones make an octave, so a range of A2–E4, 19 semitones, is about an octave and a half; the test does that count for you, like a vocal range calculator. No microphone, or a noisy room: “Pick your notes by ear” plays a note, you sing along and step it down until singing along stops feeling easy, then go back one, and the same at the top. That is how a teacher finds a range at the piano: say “hello” at your normal pitch, find that note with ▶ and the − and + buttons, then step down from there one note at a time until singing along turns creaky or breathy, and go back one; then the same upwards until it thins or pinches.

What is my voice type?

Voice teachers and opera sort voices into six types, from low to high: bass, baritone and tenor, usually men's voices, then alto (contralto), mezzo-soprano and soprano, usually women's. A choir uses four of them as its parts (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), and mezzos and baritones sing whichever part sits closer. The bands overlap a lot. The test names the one whose middle lies closest to the middle of your range, and both when two are nearly as close; untrained voices often sit between two.

A range shows the edges; a voice type is more than that. A baritone and a tenor can share the same two outer notes, but the tenor is at home near the top and changes gear higher up. Singers call that home the tessitura, and the gear change the passaggio. The voice type test asks where your voice is at home as well, and a teacher adds what no microphone reads: colour and weight.

Vocal range chart: the six voice types

Each bar is the range a trained voice of that type usually covers, all six on one keyboard from C2 to C6, low on the left. The bars overlap: a baritone and a tenor share more than an octave, an alto and a soprano almost an octave and a half. An untrained voice of the same type usually covers the middle part of its bar. Take the test above and your range lands on the chart.

From your range to the right key

After the test, “For the track” turns the range into keys. The working range is the comfortable one, not the reach: a melody sung there for a whole chorus stays steady. A song fits when its melody's lowest and highest notes land inside it. If they don't, move the song rather than the voice: every semitone you transpose moves every note of the melody by one semitone, and the key moves with it. Set the melody's two notes and the song's key, and the test names the smallest move that fits. A few semitones keep a song sounding like itself, so it never suggests more than six; when a song sits an octave away from your voice it says to sing it an octave lower or higher instead. To find the key of a line you already sing, use the singing key finder.

How to get a true reading

• Warm up for five minutes first. A cold voice mostly comes up short at the top; first thing in the morning the bottom can even dip lower than usual, rough and unsteady, which is not your comfortable floor. Hums, lip trills and slow slides from low to high are enough, and the vocal warm-up sings them with you in your range.
• Pick a vowel for each end: “ah” or “oh” for the low note. For the high one, try “oo” if “ah” gets tight near the gear change; very high voices often find an open “ah” easier again. Use the same vowels each time you retest.
• Hold the phone 20 to 30 cm from your mouth. Phone microphones are weakest at the bottom, and low notes are quiet: give them voice, not breath. If it says it couldn't hear a note, sing a little louder or come closer.
• If it says No microphone, the browser has blocked it. On an iPhone in Safari: tap the page-menu button (aA) at the left of the address bar, then Website Settings, Microphone, Allow; if that's already on, check Settings, Apps, Safari, Microphone. On Android in Chrome: tap the icon left of the address, then Permissions, and turn Microphone on. Then reload the page.
• Test on two or three different days. A range shifts by a few semitones with the time of day, sleep and how much you have talked; your range is the one that keeps coming back.

Male and female vocal ranges in notes and Hz

Men's voices sit about an octave below women's: longer, heavier vocal folds vibrate more slowly. A typical male vocal range lies between E2 and C5, a typical female vocal range between F3 and C6, and the two share more than an octave around middle C. The table gives each type's usual band, its edges in hertz (equal temperament, A4 = 440 Hz), and the two places where that voice usually changes gear, the first and second passaggio, from the voice teacher Richard Miller (The Structure of Singing, 1986; Training Tenor Voices, 1993; Training Soprano Voices, 2000; Securing Baritone, Bass-Baritone, and Bass Voices, 2008).

The soprano vocal range, about C4–C6, is the highest; sopranos carry the tune in most choirs and sing the heroines in opera. The mezzo-soprano sits a third lower and sounds darker. The alto vocal range, about F3–F5, is the lowest women's voice: the choir's alto part sits here, and a true classical contralto is darker still. The tenor vocal range, about C3–C5, is the highest common men's voice, where many pop and rock leads sit. The baritone vocal range, about G2–G4, is the warm middle of men's voices and usually called the most common. The bass vocal range, about E2–E4, is the lowest, the floor of a choir.

The pitch you speak on sits low in your range: around 100 to 150 Hz (about G2 to D3) for most men, 180 to 250 Hz (about F♯3 to B3) for most women. A child's voice before the voice change sits in the alto and soprano bands, boys' too; a boy's voice then drops by about an octave, a girl's by a few semitones, and both settle over a few years.

What is a normal vocal range?

Most adults who don't train have 15 to 20 semitones that feel easy, an octave and a quarter to an octave and two thirds, plus a few notes they can just touch. Two octaves of comfortable notes is a wide untrained voice. Trained singers work across two to three octaves: when Lamarche, Ternström and Pabon measured female opera soloists (Journal of Voice, 2010), their voices reached over three octaves in the lab and used about two in their repertoire. A good range is one your songs fit in. “Happy Birthday” spans exactly one octave, and many pop choruses stay inside an octave and a half. “The Star-Spangled Banner” spans an octave and a fifth, 19 semitones (B♭3 to F5 in B♭), which is why so many people run out of notes at “the land of the free” or have to start lower.

Chest voice, head voice and falsetto: which notes count

Low notes come from chest voice, the one you speak in. Going up, the voice shifts into head voice, lighter and thinner. Many people feel a break there, a crack or a sudden change of sound, near the passaggio in the table. That is normal, not a fault, and singers learn to cross it smoothly; pop teachers call the blend mix. For the comfortable range, count head-voice notes that feel easy and sound like something you would sing in a song. Falsetto, the airy, flute-like top most men have, belongs to the notes within reach: the second pair of rounds allows it. Above head voice some sopranos have a whistle register, from around C6 up, which is in nobody's comfortable range. Vocal fry, the creak under your lowest note, counts nowhere.

Why another vocal range test names a different note

Three reasons, the most common first. Octave numbers: this page calls middle C C4, the scientific way, but Yamaha keyboards, Ableton, Logic and Cubase call it C3, and FL Studio calls it C5, so the same voice reads an octave apart. Extreme against comfortable: a test that asks for the lowest and highest sound you can make collects growls and squeaks, and its range is wider than any song you will sing. And the bands: charts disagree by a few notes per voice type, because some list what a trained voice covers and some what an untrained one sings with ease. The bands here are the wide classical ones, and the test compares the middle of your range with the middle of each band, so a narrow untrained range still lands on its type.

Does autotune change your vocal range?

No. Autotune, or pitch correction, moves a note you sang to the nearest note of the key, a few cents up to a semitone; it can't give you a note your voice doesn't make, and pushed further it sounds like a robot. This test hears your voice as it is, with nothing corrected: the lowest and highest notes you held steady. Autotune helps a recording sound in tune; only practice changes what you can sing, and the pitch test shows how close you land without it.

Can you expand your vocal range?

Some of it. Practice adds notes mostly at the top, as head voice gets stronger and the gear change smoother; a few semitones over a few months of regular singing is a common result, more with a teacher. The bottom moves little, because it depends on the length and mass of the vocal folds. No exercise changes your voice type, and forcing notes that strain doesn't add them. To see what practice did, test again every month or so, at the same time of day after the same warm-up, and compare the two notes.

Questions people ask about vocal range

Who can sing ten octaves?

Guinness World Records lists Tim Storms for the greatest vocal range by a male, ten octaves (2008), and for the lowest vocal note by a male, G−7 at 0.189 Hz (2012), as of 2026. Everything below about 20 Hz is heard as separate pulses, not as a pitch: that part is vocal fry, measured with instruments. Counted from 20 Hz, his range is still more than five octaves, which is exceptional.

Can Ariana Grande sing seven octaves?

No. Her range is usually given as about four octaves, the top of it whistle notes. Seven octaves for a pop singer is a claim that doesn't survive a note-by-note count. Four is already about twice what most trained singers use on stage.

Is E3 low for a girl?

Low, not unusual. E3 is 165 Hz, a semitone under the alto band's usual floor of F3 and just under the speaking pitch of most women. Contraltos sing it regularly in chest voice, many altos can touch it, and sopranos usually only reach it quietly. If E3 feels easy, your voice probably leans alto.

Are female altos rare?

Altos aren't: choirs fill their alto sections easily, because many women's comfortable middle sits there. The rare one is the true contralto of classical music, a dark female voice at ease down to E3 or D3. Mezzo-soprano is the female voice usually called the most common.

What is the rarest voice type?

The countertenor, a man singing in the alto or mezzo band, mostly in head voice and falsetto; the basso profondo and the contralto come next. Nobody has counted, so take that as teachers' experience. This test names a countertenor's range alto or mezzo-soprano, because it reads notes, not who sings them.

What is vibrato?

A regular swing of pitch on a held note, about five to seven times a second, up to a semitone either way in opera and less in pop (Johan Sundberg, The Science of the Singing Voice, 1987). It doesn't throw this test: the reading takes the middle of everything you held. To see your own, hold a note for eight seconds.

Is there a vocal range test app?

No install needed to test your vocal range: this one runs in the browser on an iPhone, an Android phone or a laptop. To check one note at a time, use What note am I singing?; to see whether you sing a melody in tune, Can I sing in tune?

Then make something of it

The middle of your range goes into Brumm as a note, inside a club track with a beat and a bass. No account, no upload: the note travels inside the link itself. Hum a whole line there, and it becomes an instrument.

Your voice stays on your phone: the tool reads it in the browser and keeps nothing. How the site counts visits.