Vocal Range Test

Measure your lowest and highest notes by singing, and see the closest voice type

The vocal range test listens to your singing through the microphone of a phone or computer and records the lowest and highest notes you can sing. A note counts only when you hold it at the same pitch for 0.5 seconds, so a brief squeak or a cracked note does not end up in the result. The result shows the note names in scientific notation (A4), their frequency, the width of your range, and which male voice type and which female voice type your range is closest to.

The range map in the middle of the workspace lays the typical ranges of the six voice types, from bass to soprano, as bars over a keyboard and draws your range on top as a band. While you sing, the note you are making moves as a line over the keyboard, and the band widens each time a new lowest or highest note is recorded. If you choose the lowest and highest notes of a song, the tool also works out how many keys to change at karaoke. The sound is analysed only on this device and is never recorded or sent to a server.

When it helps to know your range

• Choosing a song and a key for karaoke: if a song’s top note is above yours, you end up straining on the chorus. Knowing your range tells you in advance which songs you can sing in the original key and which need a lower one, and the key calculator below works out how many keys to change.
• Finding your part in a choir: unlike classical solo singing, choirs divide singers by range alone, and the adult parts are usually soprano, alto, tenor and bass. On the map you can see at once which part’s range your lowest and highest notes fall in.
• Singing a song written for the other voice: a man singing a woman’s song, or the reverse, is often more comfortable an octave down or up than with a big key change in the original octave. The key calculation compares both and tells you which one changes the key less.
• Tracking vocal practice: measuring again at the same time of day and in the same order shows how much your lowest and highest notes have widened. Results are not saved, so take a screenshot if you want to keep them.
• Comparing speaking pitch with singing range: the fundamental frequency of adult speech is typically 90–155 Hz for men (about F♯2–D♯3) and 165–255 Hz for women (about E3–C4). That sits at the bottom of the typical voice-type ranges or below them, so singing uses notes well above your speaking voice.

How to use it

1. In a quiet place, tap “Turn on mic & start”. Allow the microphone when the browser asks, and keep the phone or laptop about a hand’s width from your mouth.
2. ① Find lowest: start on a comfortable note, hold “ah” for about 1 second, and step down slowly, a semitone or a whole tone at a time. Stop when the sound turns into a rattle or only breath is left. When you hold the same pitch for 0.5 seconds, that note is recorded as your lowest.
3. Tap ② Find highest and climb. Start again from a comfortable note and go up one note at a time, and stop if your throat tightens or hurts. The highest-note box changes each time you hold a higher note for 0.5 seconds.
4. Check the result. The speaker button beside the lowest and highest notes plays that note, and the redo button clears only that box so you can measure it again. Range width and closest voice type appear once both notes are recorded.
5. Set your karaoke key. Choose the song’s lowest and highest notes and you get the key change and the song’s range after the change. If you do not know the song’s lowest note, leave “Unknown” and set only the highest.

Typical range of each voice type

The voice types used in classical singing are bass, baritone and tenor for men, and contralto (alto), mezzo-soprano and soprano for women. The table gives the typical ranges that the English Wikipedia article “Voice type” lists, citing McKinney, Boldrey and others (the bass range is cited to Boldrey), and the map and the voice-type comparison in this tool use these values. Frequencies are equal-temperament values with A4 = 440 Hz.

Typical ranges differ a little between sources. The same Wikipedia’s “Vocal range” article quotes another paper (Para, 2017) with narrower figures, such as D3–A4 for tenor, B2–F4 for baritone and G2–C4 for bass, and adds that these are approximations that should not be applied strictly. A voice type is also not decided by range alone. Singing teachers look at range together with tessitura (the pitch you sing most comfortably), timbre and the passaggio (the point where the voice changes register). So read the voice type in this tool as “by range, you are closest to this type”.

Note names: C4, A4 and middle C

This tool writes note names in scientific pitch notation: a letter plus an octave number, with A4 = 440 Hz and C4 = middle C on the piano. The octave number changes at C, not at A, so B3 is the note just below C4 and the octave from C4 to B4 all carries the number 4. The A above middle C is A4 (440 Hz), the reference pitch most instruments tune to, and C5 (523.25 Hz) is the next C up. Other notations name the same notes differently (in Helmholtz notation, for example, a plain “C” is the C two octaves below middle C), so when you read a range elsewhere, check which note it calls C4 or A4.

How the karaoke key is worked out

In this tool, 1 key is one semitone. The same key change is added to the song’s lowest and highest notes, and if both then fall inside your range you can sing the song at that key. If several keys work, the one that changes the original key the least is chosen. When more than 6 keys of change would be needed in the original octave, it is compared with singing an octave lower or higher, and the option with the smaller key change is shown first. If the song’s range is wider than yours, no key can fit all of it, so the tool shows the key that splits the extra semitones above and below as evenly as possible, and says how many semitones are missing.

The result is in semitones, so when you change the key on a karaoke machine, check whether that machine’s key display counts in semitones too. After changing the key, sing the highest part of the chorus once, and if your throat tightens, go down one more key. The result is only right if you enter the song’s lowest and highest notes from the score or the recording.

Tips for an accurate reading

• Warm up and drink water first. The US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) advises drinking plenty of water and resting your voice during the day. A few easy hums on comfortable notes mean you do not have to push from the start.
• Do not force the highest and lowest notes. The same institute advises avoiding the extremes of your range, such as shouting or whispering. A note that makes your throat tighten or hurt is hard to use in a song even if it is recorded.
• Do not measure with a hoarse or tired voice. Not singing with a hoarse voice is part of the same advice, so measure again on a day your voice feels fine.
• Hold one note for about a second on an open vowel. “Ah” or “oh” is picked up best. Breathy sounds such as “s” or “h” have no pitch and are not recorded.
• Measure where there is no backing music or other sound. Music, a TV or other people’s voices can be read as your note.
• To measure only your full voice, stop before you flip into falsetto. Falsetto sits above the modal register you normally speak and sing in, and the two overlap by about an octave. This tool does not tell modal from falsetto and records only the pitch.

How it measures

About 30 times a second the tool takes the latest 85 milliseconds of microphone sound (4096 samples at 48 kHz), finds the period with the McLeod and Wyvill normalised square difference function (NSDF), and divides the sample rate by the period to get the fundamental frequency. Unlike the instrument tuner on this site, which uses the same method, there are no candidate strings, so every sound inside the detection range is read as the nearest semitone. The median of the last 0.15 seconds is used as the current pitch, and when that pitch stays within 0.8 semitone of its average for 0.5 seconds, the average rounded to a semitone is recorded. For the closest voice type, the centre of your lowest and highest notes is compared with the centre of each type’s typical range, and one type is picked among the men’s and one among the women’s; if the two nearest types are within 1 semitone of each other in distance, the result reads “between” the two.

Common problems

• The highest note comes out higher than expected. You slipped from full voice into falsetto and kept climbing. To know how high you can sing in full voice, stop where the sound flips lightly and measure ② Find highest again.
• The lowest note is not recorded. Going below what you can sing in modal (chest) voice turns the sound into vocal fry, made with a loose closure of the vocal folds. This tool reads only sounds with a clear period (clarity 0.85 or higher), so a rough, rattling sound may not be recorded, and a sound too quiet to last 0.5 seconds is not recorded either. Try a clear sound a little higher.
• A lowest note appears before you sing. If a loud electrical hum is mixed into the microphone, the tool may read it as a low note. Clear it with the redo button and measure again with another microphone.
• A note is recorded an octave too high or too low. A nasal or very breathy sound has a weak fundamental and can occasionally be read an octave off. The 0.5-second hold filters out most of these, but if an odd value remains, clear that box with its redo button and sing it again on “ah”.
• Backing music or other sound is read as your note. If music is playing while you measure, its notes can be recorded when they last more than 0.5 seconds. Measure without backing music.
• The key worked out for karaoke does not fit. The calculation uses the song’s lowest and highest notes that you entered, so if the karaoke backing differs in key or arrangement from the recording you checked those notes on, the result differs too. Check both the key shown on the machine and the original’s top note.

Limits

• It reads one person and one note at a time. If several people sing together or you add harmony, it reads one of the notes or gives no verdict.
• The voice-type result compares only the centre of your range. It cannot judge timbre, comfortable pitch and the passaggio, which are also used to decide a voice type, so to find your classical voice type it is better to have a teacher hear you.
• The typical ranges are those used in classical (opera) classification and differ between sources. So your range being narrower than every bar is not a strange result in itself.
• The detection range is 50–2,100 Hz. Vocal fry below it and whistle notes above it are not read.
• Bluetooth earphone microphones and video-call devices process the sound inside the device, which can weaken notes. This tool asks the browser to turn off noise suppression and automatic gain control, but some devices may not apply that.
• Your record is kept only while this page is open and is not saved. Reloading or closing the page returns to the example screen.

Reference date The sources were checked on 2026-10-28.

Sources

• 01Wikipedia: Voice typeTypical ranges cited to McKinney, Boldrey and others (soprano C4–C6, mezzo-soprano A3–A5, contralto F3–F5, tenor C3–C5, baritone A2–A4, bass E2–E4), C4 = middle C, the four elements of classification (range, tessitura, timbre, passaggio), choirs divide singers by range alone
• 02Wikipedia: Vocal rangeOther typical ranges quoted from Para (2017) (tenor D3–A4, baritone B2–F4, bass G2–C4 and others) are approximations, range alone does not decide the voice type and tessitura and timbre matter more, four adult choir parts
• 03Wikipedia: Vocal registerVocal fry is the lowest register, made with loosely closed vocal folds, modal is the usual register for speaking and singing, falsetto lies above modal and overlaps it by about an octave, whistle is the highest register
• 04Wikipedia: Voice frequencyFundamental frequency of adult speech: men 90–155 Hz, women 165–255 Hz
• 05Wikipedia: Scientific pitch notationThe international standard pitch that sets A4 at exactly 440 Hz (officially adopted in 1955) and the octave-number notation written beside the note name
• 06NIDCD: Taking Care of Your VoiceDrink plenty of water, rest your voice, do not speak or sing when hoarse or tired, avoid using the extremes of your range such as shouting or whispering
• 07McLeod and Wyvill, A Smarter Way to Find Pitch (University of Otago, web archive PDF)Normalised square difference function n′(τ) = 2r′(τ) ÷ m′(τ), the first key maximum above the highest value × k, and a pitch method that finds the period with parabolic interpolation
• 08MDN: AnalyserNode.getFloatTimeDomainData()A Web Audio method that copies the latest samples of the incoming sound into an array

Frequently asked questions

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