Guide
Finding your vocal range: lowest and highest notes and the closest voice type
Your vocal range is the span from the lowest note you can sing to the highest, measured in notes or octaves. Knowing it helps you pick songs in a comfortable key, set the key for a band, choose a choir part or just satisfy curiosity. The test listens to you sing a slide, finds the pitch many times a second and reports your lowest and highest notes.
How to take the test
Press Start and allow the microphone. Sing a low note on “ah”, then slide down to the lowest note you can hold steadily for about a second. After that, slide up to the highest note you can sing without straining. A message tells you that the lowest and highest notes appear once each has been held steadily. The reading Now singing shows the current note, its frequency and its offset in cents, so you can see what the page hears. Clear and start again resets the result.
How the notes are found
The page analyses the microphone signal with the YIN method for frequencies between 60 and 1,300 Hz, which covers the singing voice from deep bass to high soprano. Very quiet sound, below -45 dBFS, is ignored, so breath and room noise do not count. A note is added to your range only after the same semitone has been held for several moments with high confidence, so a squeak, a cough or a crack does not stretch the result.
A worked example
Press Sample for a demonstration range from 110 Hz to 659.26 Hz. That is A2 to E5, 31 semitones or 2.6 octaves. The closest voice type is Tenor, whose textbook range is C3 to C5. The comparison reads -3 semitones at the bottom, since A2 is three semitones below C3, and +4 at the top, since E5 is four above C5. The piano keys from A2 to E5 are highlighted, with a few extra keys either side.
Voice types
The six types in choral writing are bass E2 to E4, baritone A2 to A4, tenor C3 to C5, alto F3 to F5, mezzo-soprano A3 to A5 and soprano C4 to C6. They overlap, and a singer fits in several. The tool chooses the one whose range is closest to yours. A tenor and a baritone are close, and the true difference lies in timbre and in the notes at which the voice changes register, which a pitch test cannot hear.
Edge cases
Falsetto, head voice and chest voice all count as notes, so a range that includes falsetto is wider than the comfortable one. Vocal fry at the bottom and whistle tones at the top are poorly detected. Octave mistakes are possible for weak low notes, so check the result by playing the note on the Virtual Piano. If the page reports a wide range with a different voice type each time, sing more steadily.
Limits
It is a rough guide, not a diagnosis. Noise, a headset with noise reduction and a very quiet voice can reduce accuracy. Never strain: pain or hoarseness means stop. The audio is analysed in your browser and never uploaded.
Related tools
- Online Tuner shows the pitch of a single note in cents.
- Chord Transposer moves a song into a key that suits your range.
- Virtual Piano lets you check the notes you sang.
- Note Frequency Chart converts the notes at your limits into hertz.
Checked against the current version of the Vocal Range Test on .