Vocal range test

How to measure your vocal range

Your vocal range runs from the lowest note you can sing to the highest. Voice clinics and singing teachers chart a fuller picture with a voice range profile, which runs from the lowest sound a singer can make to the highest they can squeak out, musical or not¹; a method for it was standardised for voice clinics in 1983². This test is stricter. It counts a note only when you hold it steadily for two seconds, so a squeak you touch for an instant does not stretch the result.

A few habits make the result more accurate:

• Start low. Find your low note first, before any high singing. A lab sheet from the National Association of Teachers of Singing advises starting low and not yet warmed up, because your lowest notes may not be reachable after a lot of high singing¹.
• Slide, then hold. Hum or sing "ah" on a comfortable note, slide down slowly and stop where the tone is still clear. Hold that note. Do the same upwards for the top, on "ah" or "oo".
• Count light notes, not noises. Soft, airy high notes (head voice or falsetto) are part of your range. The crackly sound below your normal voice is vocal fry, which researchers treat as a separate register³; this test is built to ignore it.
• Stay close, and keep the room quiet. Sing within reach of the microphone, away from music, a television or other voices. The test listens for one voice.

Results use scientific pitch notation (also called American Standard Pitch Notation), in which middle C is C4⁴. The C an octave below it is C3 and the C an octave above is C5, so a note such as F♯3 lies between C3 and C4.

Voice types and their typical ranges

The opera ranges come from OperaVision's guide to voice types⁵. The choir ranges are the generally accepted ranges for four-part writing taught in Open Music Theory⁶; four-part choirs have no separate mezzo or baritone part. The opera spans describe professional voices, so a narrower range is no fault.

To suggest a voice type, the test compares the middle of your range with the middle of each opera range and names the closest, or two types when they are almost equally close. Treat that as a hint. Neighbouring types share most of their notes: by the table, a tenor and an alto have 19 of their 24 semitones in common. Teachers listen for more than range. OperaVision describes voices by where they sit most comfortably, their tessitura, and by their colour⁵. In one study, inexperienced listeners rated how different pairs of sung notes sounded; at the lowest pitch tested, their ratings lined up with the singers' voice categories, sopranos apart from mezzo-sopranos, without any information about range⁷.

Why your range changes from day to day

Expect your result to move by several notes from one test to the next. A study measured the lowest and highest notes of twenty adults three times a day, on two days one to two months apart. For the average person, the lowest note, the highest note and the total range each varied by at least several semitones⁸.

Warming up may be one reason. After five or ten minutes of warm-up, the highest notes of the women in a small group of voice students rose⁹. In another study, three minutes of lip trills widened the singing range of healthy women¹⁰. Not every study agrees: in a group of ten sopranos, a short warm-up did not measurably change their highest or lowest notes¹¹. Order matters too, as above: plenty of high singing can take your lowest notes away for a while¹.

Tiredness works the other way. Asked what changes when their voices are tired, singers rated pitch range among the most affected parts of their voice¹². After a long rehearsal or a loud evening, your range may be narrower than usual.

So treat one result as a snapshot, and test at the same time of day after the same warm-up when you compare. If you want to see how your range moves over weeks, Warmelo, our iPhone app, asks you to check your range again from time to time and builds your daily warm-ups inside it. Neither this test nor the app is a medical check.

Common mistakes

• Pushing for one more note. A strained or shouted note you cannot hold is not usable range, and the test counts a note only once you have held it steadily for two seconds.
• Counting the fry at the bottom. The crackle below your lowest clear note belongs to a different register³, which this test leaves out.
• Finding your low note after singing high. Do the low note first¹.
• Reading the octave wrong. Music for tenors is often written in a treble clef with a small 8 below it, which means the notes sound an octave lower than written¹³. A tenor who reads those notes at face value will place his range an octave too high.
• Testing with music playing. A piano, a backing track or another singer can be heard as your voice. Use headphones for any reference sound, or turn it off.
• Treating the voice type as a verdict. It is a hint drawn from range alone; see above.

Sources

1. National Association of Teachers of Singing, Science-Informed Voice Pedagogy Resource: Voice Range Profile (lab sheet).
2. Schutte HK, Seidner W. Recommendation by the Union of European Phoniatricians (UEP): standardizing voice area measurement/phonetography. Folia Phoniatrica. 1983;35(6):286–288.
3. Hollien H, Michel JF. Vocal fry as a phonational register. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. 1968;11(3):600–604.
4. Hamm C, Hughes B. American Standard Pitch Notation (ASPN). In: Open Music Theory, version 2. VIVA Pressbooks; 2021.
5. OperaVision. Voice types.
6. Brady S, Hamm C. Chords in SATB style. In: Open Music Theory, version 2. VIVA Pressbooks; 2021.
7. Erickson ML. Inexperienced listeners' perception of timbre dissimilarity within and between voice categories. Journal of Voice. 2020;34(2):302.e1–302.e13.
8. Gelfer MP. Stability in phonational frequency range. Journal of Communication Disorders. 1989;22(3):181–192.
9. Ragsdale FW, Marchman JO, Bretl MM, et al. Quantifying subjective and objective measures of singing after different warm-up durations. Journal of Voice. 2022;36(5):661–667.
10. Brockmann-Bauser M, Balandat B, Bohlender JE. Immediate lip trill effects on the standard diagnostic measures voice range profile, jitter, maximum phonation time, and dysphonia severity index. Journal of Voice. 2020;34(6):874–883.
11. Motel T, Fisher KV, Leydon C. Vocal warm-up increases phonation threshold pressure in soprano singers at high pitch. Journal of Voice. 2003;17(2):160–167.
12. Kitch JA, Oates J. The perceptual features of vocal fatigue as self-reported by a group of actors and singers. Journal of Voice. 1994;8(3):207–214.
13. Hamm C. Reading Clefs. In: Open Music Theory, version 2. VIVA Pressbooks; 2021.