What voice type am I?

How to find your voice type with this test

First hum or sing an “ah” on the note you would hum along to the radio on: not low, not high, just easy. Then go down to the lowest note that still has a clear tone, without the creak of vocal fry, and up to the highest you could sing a line on, without straining or squeaking. Men: leave falsetto out of the high note, the light flute-like sound above your break; it widens the range but blurs the type. Women: head voice counts, whistle notes don't. Hold each one until the bar runs out. Every note is read as one steady pitch and named as the nearest piano key (C4 is middle C, A4 is 440 Hz). About two thirds of the result comes from the easy note, a third from the middle of your range. A minute of humming or lip trills first helps: a cold voice measures a few notes short at both ends.

Voice type is not the same as vocal range

Your vocal range is how far your voice reaches; your voice type is where it lives. A baritone and a tenor can both sing from about C3 to G4, but the tenor is at home near the top of that span and the baritone lower down. Singers call that comfortable stretch the tessitura, often around an octave wide. A teacher places a voice by four things: range, tessitura, where it changes gear (the passaggio), and its colour and weight. This test measures the first two. The other two are below, with a way to check each yourself.

Vocal range chart: voice types and their ranges, male and female

From low to high: bass, baritone and tenor are usually men's voices; contralto (alto), mezzo-soprano and soprano usually women's. The chart below gives the comfortable choir and classical ranges. Charts move them by a step or two (baritone G2–G4 here, A2–A4 on some), because they are conventions, not measurements. The last column is the easy note this test hears as each type's home: an easy note near F3 leans baritone, near G4 mezzo-soprano.

The Hz are each note's fundamental in equal temperament from A4 = 440 Hz. Speaking, most adult men sit between about 85 and 155 Hz and most women between 165 and 255 Hz (R. J. Baken, Clinical Measurement of Speech and Voice, 1987), so how deep your speaking voice is says a little about your type, not much. The pitch detector shows the Hz of any note you hold.

Your result sits between two types: how to decide

Most untrained voices land between two neighbours; that is what the second name in the result is for. Three checks settle most cases.

1. Where your voice is comfortable

Sing the chorus of a song you know well with nothing playing, and let your voice pick the key; the singing key finder names it. Then start the same chorus three semitones lower, and again three semitones higher. Ask which of the three you could keep singing for ten minutes. If it is the lower start, you are likelier the lower of your two types; if the higher, the higher.

2. Where your voice changes gear

Slide slowly from low to high on “ah”, like a siren, and notice where the sound flips from full to lighter, or cracks. That is your passaggio, where chest voice hands over to head voice, and it sits higher in higher voices. Hold the note just below the flip on What note am I singing? to name it.

• Men: the upper passaggio is around D4 for basses, E♭4 to E4 for baritones, F4 to G4 for tenors.
• Women: most voices leave chest voice around E4 to F4; the upper shift is where the types part, about D5 for contraltos, E5 for mezzo-sopranos, F♯5 for sopranos.

The figures are approximate, after the tables in Richard Miller's The Structure of Singing (1986) and Training Soprano Voices (2000); a lighter voice of each type shifts a little higher.

3. Colour and weight

Record that easy chorus and play it back through a speaker: from inside your head your voice sounds darker than it does to anyone else. A light voice turns corners fast and sounds brighter than its pitch; a heavy one takes more breath to move and fills a room on low notes. Bright and quick points to the higher of your two types, dark and slow to the lower. A microphone can't judge this, this one included; a teacher can, usually in the first lesson.

Male and female voice types, and voices in between

The men's and women's columns describe most adult voices, not a rule. A woman with a low, heavy voice may sing tenor in a choir, and a countertenor is a man who sings in the alto or mezzo range, mostly in a trained falsetto (some teachers call it head voice). During puberty a boy's voice drops by about an octave and a girl's by three or four semitones, so a type found at fourteen can still move; most voices settle in the late teens or early twenties. Testosterone lowers a voice for good; oestrogen does not raise it. If you're trans, test the voice you have: the result describes a range, not you. Children aren't given these six types: a children's choir splits them only into soprano and alto (a boy soprano is called a treble) until the voice changes.

The rarest and the most common voice types

The countertenor is the rarest men's voice and the true contralto the rarest women's. Baritone is usually called the most common men's voice and mezzo-soprano the most common women's. Nobody has counted a population, so that is what teachers and choir directors report, not a statistic. There is no prettiest voice type: what sounds beautiful depends on the song and the singer, not the label.

Fach: the classical subtypes

Opera goes a step further and sorts each type by weight and agility, the German Fach system (catalogued by Rudolf Kloiber in his Handbuch der Oper, 1951). A dramatic coloratura soprano sings the Queen of the Night, a light coloratura Blonde in The Abduction from the Seraglio, a lyric soprano Mimì, a dramatic soprano Brünnhilde; a lyric tenor Rodolfo, a heldentenor Siegfried; a lyric baritone Figaro in The Barber of Seville, a basso profondo Sarastro. A Fach needs a trained voice and a teacher who has heard it for months. For pop, choir or karaoke, the six types and the right key for each song are enough.

Does your voice type change?

The range does; the type mostly doesn't. What you're born with sets the frame: the size of your larynx and the length of your vocal folds decide roughly where your type lies. Training moves the edges: most untrained voices cover one and a half to two octaves, trained singers often two and a half to three. Practice adds notes, usually at the top as head voice develops, and can lift the tessitura a little. That is how some baritones become tenors: Plácido Domingo began as a baritone, sang tenor for almost five decades and went back to baritone roles in his late sixties. Over the decades women's voices tend to drop, most after menopause, and men's often rise slightly in old age. If you train, retest every few months; the easy note moves less than the edges.

Why the result can be off

• The easy note was a performing note. Hum it the way you hum while cooking; a note chosen to impress pushes the result up.
• The low note was vocal fry, the creaky rattle below the singing voice. A phone also hears quiet low notes badly: come closer and give the note real voice.
• The high note was strained or a thin falsetto. Take the highest note you could sing a line on, not just reach.
• The voice was cold or tired. Voices sit lower first thing in the morning; test after a few minutes of the vocal warm-up.

Quick answers

Which choir part should I sing?

Most choirs sing in four parts: soprano, alto, tenor, bass. Mezzo-sopranos usually sing second soprano or first alto; baritones usually sing first bass, some second tenor. A director places you by where the part sits, so the easy note from this test is the one worth bringing.

Can I sing songs written for another voice type?

Yes, if the notes sit in your comfortable range, or once you move the song into your key; the type stays what it is. Most pop songs use about an octave to an octave and a half.

What is the hardest song to sing?

There is no measured ranking. A song is hard when its range is wider than your comfortable one: The Star-Spangled Banner spans an octave and a fifth, which is why it is so often called one of the hardest. For you, the hardest song is the one in the wrong key; the singing key finder names yours.

Can Ariana Grande sing 7 octaves?

No. The range usually quoted for her runs from D3 to E7, a little over four octaves, the top in whistle register; figures like these come from fans' collections of recordings, not from a measurement. The vocal range test measures yours.

Can ChatGPT analyse my voice?

As of 2026, ChatGPT can listen in voice mode and explain voice types, but it does not measure the pitch you hold. Naming your notes takes a pitch reader, as this page has in your browser; colour and weight are still a trained ear's job.

Then make something of it

Your easy note goes into Brumm, inside a club track with a beat and a bass, so the music starts where your voice is at home. No account, no upload: the note travels inside the link itself.

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