Vocal Range Test: What Is My Vocal Range?

These are the typical ranges vocal pedagogy gives the six main classical voice types (McKinney, The Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults, 1994; the bass from Boldrey, Guide to Operatic Roles and Arias, 1994). The test names the type, or two, whose range ends sit closest to the lowest and highest notes you hold.

The ranges overlap: a baritone’s A2 to A4 shares most of its notes with the bass and the tenor, which is why a range alone often fits two types, and the result then names both.

Each step up one note raises the frequency by about 6%, and each octave doubles it. The notes that start and end each voice type, in hertz:

A few steps make the reading match your real voice:

Time of day mattered less than people expect in one study: 20 untrained women produced voice range profiles in the morning and the evening, and the two showed no clear difference (van Mersbergen, Verdolini and Titze 1999).

Your vocal range is the span from your lowest to your highest held note, and the test gives it in octaves and semitones: 2 octaves is two full octaves, the width of every typical voice type range in the table. There is no score for a range, and no published average for untrained singers we would stand behind, so the test does not grade yours. Two octaves is a fair benchmark for a trained voice, and the notes that matter for singing are the ones in the middle of your range that you can hold comfortably for a whole song.

Choirs sort voices by range alone, but voice teachers classify a solo voice by more than its two ends: where it sits most comfortably (the tessitura), its weight and color, and where it changes register. Two singers with the same range can be a baritone and a tenor. So the test names the types your range is consistent with, never the type you are, and a teacher who hears you sing is the way to a classification.

We tested the note naming on synthetic sung vowels, every semitone from C2 to C6: 49 of 49 were named right as clean tones, 49 of 49 with vibrato of half a semitone either way, 49 of 49 with room noise and 49 of 49 through a phone-style microphone that cuts everything under 200 Hz. On 72 synthetic range takes, sung with breaths, swoops between notes and a cracked note on the way, the test found the lowest and highest notes in 72 of 72.

Those were synthetic voices, built to have a known answer, not people. A real singer’s voice is less tidy, and the biggest difference between two of your own takes will be your voice on the day, not the test.

This test reads your singing range. How deep your speaking voice is, the pitch you talk at in hertz, is a different measurement: the voice pitch test measures it from three lines read aloud and places it among adult men and women.