How to Determine Your Vocal Range

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Plus, how to find your voice type and number of octaves
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Whether you’re an operatic diva or a casual karaoke enthusiast, knowing your vocal range can help you train your voice safely and choose songs that make you sound great. You can easily figure out your vocal range and identify to which of the seven main voice types—soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, countertenor, tenor, baritone, or bass—you belong. We spoke with Amy Chapman, MA, CCC-SLP, a vocal therapist and singing voice specialist, about how to properly identify your comfortable and extended vocal ranges. We’ll also show you how to use that range to find your voice type and determine how many octaves you have.

How do you find your vocal range?

  • Warm up your voice, then sing a comfortable middle pitch and match it on the piano. Try middle C (C4) for women or C3 for men.
  • Sing and play downward note by note and stop when you can’t sustain a pitch with a full sound anymore. This is your lowest note.
  • Sing and play upward note by note to find your highest chest voice note, then keep going to find your highest head voice (falsetto) note.
Section 1 of 5:

Finding Your Highest & Lowest Notes

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  1. First, warm up your voice for a few minutes. Warming up helps you “wake up” your vocal cords, focus on your breathing, and improve the flexibility of your voice (making it easier to hit the extreme low and high notes of your range). No need for flashy technical exercises—try some of these simple warmups: [1]

    Sighs: Inhale with your mouth closed, then “sigh” through your nose, allowing your vocal cords to make a soft “yawning” sound.

    Lip buzzing: Inhale through your mouth, then exhale with your lips held loosely together so they “flap” in the air stream (like you’re mimicking a motorcycle sound).

    Descending mini-scales: Start in your head (falsetto) voice and sing 5-note scales going downward on a relaxed, open syllable like “ah” or “oo.” Repeat several times, starting on a lower pitch each time.

    Body stretches: If it’s first thing in the morning, stretch your neck, back, and shoulders to get physically comfortable. This helps you breathe deeply and support your singing voice.
  2. This will be your starting point for exploring your range. For many women, playing middle C (C4) is a good place to start. For men, try an octave lower on C3. Sing on an open, comfortable syllable like “ah” or “oo.”

    On a full-size (88 key) keyboard, middle C is the 24th white key from the left (the 4th C from the left).

    If you don’t have access to a piano or keyboard, download a piano app like Virtual Piano + instead.
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  3. Stop on the lowest note you can sustain in your normal, comfortable voice for about 3 seconds without croaking or cracking. This is the lowest note of your chest voice (your normal or “modal” voice).

    Vocal therapist Amy Chapman says, “You should not have to “breathe” the note. Its tone quality should match the rest of your chest voice and not have a breathy or scratchy sound.” [2]

    Once you know how low your voice reaches comfortably, try to go a bit lower. Amy Chapman says, “Breathy notes you can sustain for 3 seconds count for this “extended” range, but croaky notes that you cannot hold do not.” [3] For some singers, their lowest normal and breathy notes may coincide. For others, they might not.
  4. Write down the letter name of the note (A, B, C, D, E, F, or G) followed by a number that matches which octave the note is in. [4]

    For example, if your lowest note is the second-to-last E on the keyboard (the second E from the left), write down E 2 because it’s in the second octave of the piano.

    Remember that the first 2 white keys on the left (A and B) are in octave 0. Octave 1 starts at the first C (C1, or the 3rd white key from the left).
  5. Go back to your starting pitch and sing upward with the keyboard. Stop at the highest note you can sing in your chest voice for 3 seconds, but “do not let yourself go into falsetto for this exercise,” says vocal therapist Amy Chapman. [5] If you hear a break or new breathiness in your voice, then you’ve passed into your falsetto range.

    Once you’ve found your highest note in chest voice, relax your vocal cords and push yourself higher. Amy Chapman says, “Use your breathier, flute-like falsetto voice to find the highest notes you can reach without straining or cracking.” [6]

    Write down both your highest modal and falsetto notes.
  6. Put parentheses around the lowest “breathy” note and your highest falsetto note, and a dash between the middle two notes representing your chest voice.

    This notation expresses your full vocal range—your extremes low and high, plus your “normal” comfortable range. For example, your full range might look like (D 2 )G 2 –F 4 (B 4 ).
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Section 2 of 5:

Matching Your Range to a Voice Type

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  1. For most singers, this is their chest voice, or the part of the voice that feels the most natural and has the best, fullest tone most of the time. It’s where your voice naturally wants to “sit.” [7] Your tessitura is represented by the middle pitches in your 4-note range notation (your lowest and highest chest voice notes, not including your falsetto or breathy low notes).Knowing your tessitura helps determine your voice type and choose music that fits your voice. Training or singing outside of your tessitura too often (singing music sits too high or low for your voice) can lead to vocal strain or damage over time.
  2. If your full range doesn’t fit perfectly into a single voice type, use your tessitura to see which type it most closely aligns with and choose the type that fits the closest. Here are the major voice types and their approximate ranges: [8]

    Soprano: C 4 –A 5 . This is the highest female voice type.
    Mezzo-soprano: A 3 –F 5 . This is the middle female voice type.
    Alto: F 3 –D 5 . This is the lowest female voice type.
    Tenor: B 2 –G 4 . This is the highest male voice type.
    Baritone: G 2 –E 4 . This is the middle male voice type.
    Bass: E 2 –C 4 . This is the lowest male voice type.

    For example, if you have a range of (D 2 )G 2 –F 4 (A 4 ), you would most likely be a baritone, the most common voice type for men.
    EXPERT TIP

    Amy Chapman, MA

    Vocal Coach
    Amy Chapman MA, CCC-SLP is a Vocal Therapist and Singing Voice Specialist. Amy is a licensed and board-certified speech & language pathologist who has dedicated her career to helping professionals improve and optimize their voice. Amy has lectured on voice optimization, speech, vocal health, and voice rehabilitation at universities across California, including UCLA, USC, Chapman University, Cal Poly Pomona, CSUF, CSULA. Amy is trained in Lee Silverman Voice Therapy, Estill, LMRVT, and is a part of the American Speech and Hearing Association.
    Amy Chapman, MA
    Vocal Coach

    Did You Know? On any day, your voice might be a couple of notes higher or lower. It can vary due to illness, fatigue, or laryngitis.

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Section 3 of 5:

The Vocal Registers

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  1. Each register (a range or group of notes) of your voice has a distinct timbre (tone quality) and is produced by a different action of your vocal cords. This is what makes your low notes sound different from your high notes. Knowing where your registers lay in your range can help you choose songs or decide how you want your voice to sound in places where the registers overlap. [9]

    Chest (modal) voice: This is your most comfortable singing range (tessitura) where the vocal folds are relaxed and the sound resonates in your chest. These are the notes you can reach without straining or flipping into falsetto.

    Head voice: This includes the high end of your range, produced with elongated vocal folds. These notes resonate in your head and have a distinct “ringing” quality. Your head voice begins after the “break” in your voice at the high end of your chest voice. Your falsetto voice is a bit lighter and breathier and is included as part of your head voice.

    Vocal fry: This is the lowest vocal register where notes are produced by floppy, vibrating vocal folds that create low, creaking or croaking notes. Only some very low-voiced men can reach this range.

    Whistle register: This is an extension of the head voice available to some very high-voiced women. These notes can sound more like a whistle than a human voice (think Mariah Carey’s or Ariana Grande’s super high notes).
Section 4 of 5:

How many octaves is your range?

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  1. Using a keyboard, count the notes (white keys only) between the lowest note you could sing and the highest. Every eight notes (the distance from one note to the next note with the same name, like A to A) is one octave. The 8th note will also count as the 1st note of the next octave. [10]

    For example, if your lowest note was E 2 and your highest note was E 4 , then you have a range of two octaves (E 2 to E 3 is 8 white keys, and E 3 to E 4 is another 8 white keys).

    Include partial octaves as well. If your lowest note is E 2 and your highest is B 4 (just 4 more notes into the next octave), you’d say you have 2.5 octaves.

    Acoustically, an octave is the interval between 2 notes where the top note has twice the sound frequency of the bottom note. For example, A 4 is 440 Hz and A 5 (one octave higher) is 880 Hz. [11] Notes that are an octave apart will have the same letter name.

    If you’re unsure how to count octaves yourself, use an online octave calculator . Just plug in your lowest and highest notes to find out!
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Section 5 of 5:

What’s Scientific Pitch Notation?

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  1. Scientific Pitch Notation (SPN) is the standard way of writing and understanding musical notes using letters (to identify the notes A through G) and numbers (to identify the octave the note is in). [12]

    The lowest note on a full piano keyboard is A 0 . The highest note is C 8 .

    The first, lowest octave begins on C 1 , or the first “C” on the keyboard. This is because the C major scale uses only the white notes of the keyboard, making octave identification easier.

    Non-C notes get their octave designation from the C below them. For example, the E above C 4 is E 4 .

    The first 2 white keys (“A” and “B”) are in octave 0 because they come before C 1 .

Expert Q&A

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  • Question
    How do you determine your vocal range?
    Amy Chapman, MA
    Vocal Coach
    Amy Chapman MA, CCC-SLP is a Vocal Therapist and Singing Voice Specialist. Amy is a licensed and board-certified speech & language pathologist who has dedicated her career to helping professionals improve and optimize their voice. Amy has lectured on voice optimization, speech, vocal health, and voice rehabilitation at universities across California, including UCLA, USC, Chapman University, Cal Poly Pomona, CSUF, CSULA. Amy is trained in Lee Silverman Voice Therapy, Estill, LMRVT, and is a part of the American Speech and Hearing Association.
    Amy Chapman, MA
    Vocal Coach
    Expert Answer
    Vocal range is essentially dropping your voice as low as it can go. So do some warm up, and then hum all the way down or let your voice drop all the way down to the lowest place. And then go all the way up. Wherever you can hold a note for three seconds, I would call that your vocal range.
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  • Question
    Is it necessary to use a piano? I don't have any keyboard or piano in my home.
    Community Answer
    Another way to find the notes that a piano can provide is to find a piano app, such as the Pitch Pipe app, for your smartphone, iPad, or other relevant device. This is easy to use and the sound will still be effective.
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  • Question
    I'm female and my range is (E3)G3-D5(F5). What is my voice classification?
    Rosie Doherty
    Community Answer
    I would say a lyric Contralto since you can go a little lower than most Contralto can and can hit the top of your range at F5. Most Conaltos can sing that note. Most go to E5 so i say in middle for Contralto.
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      • If you’re having trouble identifying your voice type, use your tessitura since those are the notes you can sing most easily.
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      • If your voice falls between types, find what is most comfortable to sing. If that doesn't work, the range your voice is strongest may be the answer.
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      • While vocal range is probably the most important part of voice types, other aspects of your voice like timbre and where your head and chest voice sit are taken into account.
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      References

      1. ↑ https://nafme.org/blog/vocal-health-how-choral-directors-can-help-students/
      2. ↑ Amy Chapman, MA. Vocal Coach. Expert Interview. 18 October 2019.
      3. ↑ Amy Chapman, MA. Vocal Coach. Expert Interview. 18 October 2019.
      4. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_B8MFz72fI
      5. ↑ Amy Chapman, MA. Vocal Coach. Expert Interview. 18 October 2019.
      6. ↑ Amy Chapman, MA. Vocal Coach. Expert Interview. 18 October 2019.
      7. ↑ https://www.singwise.com/articles/understanding-vocal-range-vocal-registers-and-voice-type-a-glossary-of-vocal-terms
      8. ↑ https://web.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/vocal-ranges
      9. ↑ https://vocalist.org.uk/voice-registers
      1. ↑ https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/octaves/
      2. ↑ https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/octaves/
      3. ↑ https://www.musicandtheory.com/an-easy-guide-to-scientific-pitch-notation/

      About This Article

      Article Summary X

      To find your vocal range, start by singing a note on a consistent vowel sound, like "ah," "ee," or "oo," and working your way down the scale so you're singing lower and lower notes. Then, write down the lowest note you can sing without your voice cracking or croaking. Next, repeat the same process, but this time sing as high as you can, including the highest note you can sing in falsetto. Finally, use the lowest and highest notes you can sing to determine your vocal range. To learn how to classify your range once you know what notes you can comfortably sing, scroll down!

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