How to Find Your Vocal Range

Knowing your vocal range is very important to being able to sing. A lot of singers have a great vocal range–Michael Jackson can sing in four octaves!–but there are also a lot of people who don’t have such a natural talent. Most people’s natural voices will span 1.5 to 2 octaves and will go up or down another octave when switching to other voices. With a little basic vocal understanding and practice, you’ll easily know your vocal range and know which of the 7 vocal types your voice belongs to: soprano (soprano), mezzo-soprano (soprano) ), alto (female bass), countertenor (anti-high male), tenor (high male), baritone (mid male), or bass (bass male).

Table of Contents

Find your lowest note

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Find an instrument similar to a piano. The easiest way to determine your range is to use a tuned instrument that you can sing and play at the same time, such as a piano or a keyboard instrument. If you don’t have an instrument at all, you can download piano apps, such as Virtual Piano, on your phone, tablet, or other device instead of a real piano.

An online piano on a computer or other device will often simulate a real piano keyboard. It’s also easier to find your lowest and highest notes because the app will display the number of note symbols when you play any note.

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Find the lowest note you can sing in a modal voice. Start determining your vocal range by finding the lowest note you can get down without becoming hoarse or broken. You should also not try to sing with air, that is, the quality of your voice should correspond to your natural voice without being hoarse or breathy in your voice. ^{[1] X Research Source}

Instead of randomly singing the lowest note, you can sing a higher note with vowels (like “ah” or “ee” or “oo”) and slowly go down to find your lowest note. .
If you’re a female, start with C4 (the middle C on the piano), and work your way down, matching each note until you reach the lowest note. If it’s a male voice, start with C3 on the piano and work your way down one note at a time.
The goal is to find notes that you can sing comfortably, so don’t count notes that you can’t sustain.

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Sing the lowest note you can get down to, including notes where your voice sounds like breathing. Once you know the boundaries of a low note where you can sing comfortably, work your way down to the lower notes, one at a time. Breathing notes that you can hum also count in your vocal range, but notes that your voice is wheezing and hoarse and can’t hold for long do not. ^{[2] X Research Source}

Some singers will have the same true low and false low note. Others are not.

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Record your lowest note. Once you’ve found the lowest note in your normal voice and the lowest you can reach, record those notes. Find the frets that correspond to those notes and record them. ^{[3] X Research Sources}

For example, if the lowest note you can sing while going down is the second lowest E on the keyboard, record E ₂ .

Find your highest note

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Find the highest note you can sing in your normal voice. Use the same methods as when you found your lowest note, only now you find the highest note. Start with a high note that you can easily reach, then work your way up one note at a time. Don’t use wind voice for this part.

If you have a female voice, start with C5 and work your way up. If it’s a male voice, start with G3.
You need to find the highest note you can sing without having to change the quality of your voice or change to an unnatural voice. If you hear a broken or windy voice, or if you feel like your vocal cords are working a little differently than usual to sing a note, you’ve gone beyond your normal vocal range.

Identify and classify your vocal range

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Find your vocal range and range. You now have 4 signed notes, 2 high notes and 2 low notes. Arrange them in order from lowest to highest. Close parentheses for the highest and lowest notes, and write a dash between the two middle notes. This is your full vocal range.

For example, if your notes are D ₂ , G ₂ , F ₄ , and B ₄ , your vocal range notation is (D ₂ )G ₂ -F ₄ (B ₄ ).
The two outer notes in brackets are your entire vocal range, that is, all the notes you can sing.
The two notes in the middle (for example, “G ₂ -F ₄ ” as in the example above) are your cadence, the range you can sing comfortably in your normal voice. This is a very important factor when you are deciding on your voice type. ^{[6] X Research Sources}

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Count the notes between your low and high notes. On the piano keys, count the notes between the lowest and the highest note you can sing. ^{[7] X Research Sources}

Don’t pay attention to the sharps or flats (the black keys) as you count. ^{[8] X Research Sources}

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Calculate the number of octaves in your vocal range. Each interval consists of eight notes. for example, from La to La is considered an interval. However, the last la note is considered the beginning of another octave. So you can infer the number of octaves in your vocal range by counting the notes between your highest and lowest notes in pairs of 7. ^{[9] X Research Source}

For example, if your lowest note is E ₂ and your highest note is E ₄ , your vocal range consists of two octaves.

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Including notes that don’t make up an interval. For example, a lot of people have a vocal range of 1.5 octaves. The reason for that half is because the person can only sing 3 or 4 notes comfortably in the next interval.

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Change vocal range to voice type. Once you know your vocal ranges and have recorded them, you can use that information to find your voice type. Each voice type has its own range; Find the type of voice that corresponds to your entire vocal range. ^{[10] X Research Source}

The vocal ranges for each voice type are: soprano B3-G6, mezzo-soprano G3-A5, alto E3-F5, countertenor G3-C6, tenor C3-B4, baritone G2-G4, bass D2-E4. ^{[11] X Research Source}
Your vocal range may not fully correspond to these standard voice types. Choose the type of voice that is most appropriate and close to the same.
If your vocal range doesn’t quite match any type of voice, find the one that works best by using the scale. You should choose the type of voice that you can easily sing most comfortably.
So, if your vocal range is written like this: (D ₂ )G ₂ -F ₄ (A ₄ ), you would be best suited for a baritone voice, the most common type of voice for most men. .

Learn the basics of vocal range

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Know the types of voices. Many people have heard of the terms soprano, tenor, or bass, but do not understand what they mean. In opera, the voice is considered an instrument that emits musical notes, like a flute or a violin. As a result, people began to distinguish different types of voices, which also made it easier to recruit opera singers for each part of the piece. ^{[12] X Research Source}

There aren’t many opera singers these days, but identifying your voice type will help you to know the notes you can reach when performing any type of music, whether solo or choral. In daily life, this also helps you to know which song suits your voice when choosing karaoke songs.
The different vocal types from highest to lowest are: soprano (soprano), mezzo-soprano (female soprano), alto (female bass), countertenor (anti-thigh), tenor (tenor), baritone (male). middle), and bass (bass male). Each type of voice has a different vocal range.

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Distinguish between tones. You can divide vocal types into smaller groups based on their zones. Each register has a different timbre, and is made up of different activities of the vocal cords. Accurately assessing your vocal range requires looking at the range of more than one register, primarily the one that contains the modal voice or chest voice and the head voice, and in the special combinations, whistle voice and fry voice. ^{[13] X Research Source}

When you sing comfortably without difficulty, you are singing with your chest voice and your vocal cords are working naturally. These are notes that you can reach without having to add bass, breath, or wind tones. The range in which you can sing comfortably with your chest voice is called the cadence. ^{[14] X Research Source}
Your first voice consists of the highest note in your vocal range, produced by the stretched vocal cords. This voice is called the head voice because it consists of notes that sound very loud in the head and have vibrations. The wind voice – the voice most people use when imitating female opera singers – is considered the first voice. ^{[15] X Research Source}
For some people with a very deep male voice, the lowest register, the vocal fry, is also considered a type of voice, but very few people can get down to such low notes. These notes are produced when the vocal cords vibrate and produce low, broken, and hoarse sounds. ^{[16] X Research Source}
If the starting voice includes the sub-bass notes that only a few men possess, the flute voice is the towering notes that very few women have. The flute voice is an extension of the first voice, but has a very different timbre and sounds like a whistle. Examples are the huge high notes in songs like “Lovin’ You” by Minnie Riperton or “Emotions” by Mariah Carey. ^{[17] X Research Source}

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Know what an octave is. An octave is the distance between two identical notes (e.g. a si note and a si note), the higher note has twice the sound frequency as the lower one. On a piano, each octave consists of 8 frets (not counting the black notes). One way to describe your vocal ranges is to describe them in terms of how many vocal ranges you can sing. ^{[18] X Research Sources}

Octaves are equivalent to standard scales, usually consisting of 8 notes arranged in descending or ascending order (e.g. CDEFGABC – remi fa sp la si dollars). The distance between the first and last notes is one octave.

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Know about standard notation. Standard notation is a standardized method used to write and read musical notes using letters (corresponding to notes A through G) and numbers (corresponding intervals, high to low, starting at number 0).

For example, the lowest note on most pianos is A ₀ , in the next octave the same note will be A ₁ and so on. The note we call the middle C (Middle C) is actually C ₄ in the standard notation.
Since the C major scale is the only scale that does not have sharps or flats (and therefore also uses only white notes on the keyboard), the standard notation defines octaves as starting with C (C) instead of C. because the note la (A). This means that, even though the lowest (leftmost) note on the keyboard is A ₀ , the first C ₁ is the note 2 spaces away from this note, and so on for the following octaves. Therefore, the first la (A) that is higher than the middle C ₄ ) will be an A ₄ instead of an A ₅ .
Your vocal range will consist of 3 out of 4 octaves, spanning from the lowest and highest notes in your chest voice and the highest notes in your head voice. Those with a starter voice and a flute voice also have their own number of musical notations for that vocal range, which also range from the lowest note to the highest note.

Advice

Remember that vocal range or voice type does not determine whether you sing or not. Many world-famous singers, like Pavarotti, belong to the tenor, the shortest of all ranges.
If you still can’t identify your voice type, here are a few things to keep in mind. First, use scales instead of your entire vocal range, as they are notes you can sing easily. Second, if your voice responds to a variety of voices, choose the range in which you are most comfortable singing. If that’s still difficult, the vocal range in which you sing best is your voice type. Finally, although this is not mentioned – vocal range is the most important thing to find a voice type, but you should also pay attention to other aspects of your voice (timbre, notes transitions between types of your voice). – for example, from chest voice to head voice, etc.).

Warning

The methods and information above use standard notation, with the middle C being C ₄ . However, many pieces of music and musicians use a different notation system (for example, treat the middle C as C ₀ or C ₅ ). Your vocal range is also written differently from the introductory spellings above, so double-check which one is being used.
You should warm up, warm up with vocal exercises to start singing, especially when you will be singing with notes at the beginning or end of your vocal range. ^{[19] X Research Source}

Steps