How the test works
The test only counts notes you can hold steadily for a full second. A single squeak at the top or growl at the bottom is shown separately as a momentary peak and does not stretch your range — the notes you can actually sing with are what decide your voice type.
Your voice type is chosen by comparing your held range with the six standard ranges and picking the closest overlap. You always get a closest type plus the two runners-up; if your range is under an octave, the result is marked as a rough guess.
Voice types and their ranges
| Voice type | Typical range | Usual choir part |
|---|---|---|
| Soprano | about C4–C6 | Soprano |
| Mezzo-soprano | about A3–A5 | Soprano II / Alto I |
| Contralto | about F3–F5 | Alto (lowest notes) |
| Tenor | about C3–C5 | Tenor |
| Baritone | about A2–A4 | Bass I / Tenor II |
| Bass | about E2–E4 | Bass |
Not sure what the numbers mean? Vocal ranges explained.
Get an accurate result
- Warm up for a few minutes first. Hum or do lip trills. A cold voice loses notes at both ends.
- Use a quiet room. Turn off music and the TV — background sound confuses pitch detection.
- Use your laptop or phone microphone, or a wired headset. Bluetooth headset microphones are low quality and can misread high notes.
- Stay about a forearm’s length from the microphone and sing at a steady, comfortable volume. Shouting or whispering both make the reading unstable.
- Turn off noise-cancelling software such as call-noise filters or “voice focus” modes. They are built for speech and can cut out sustained singing.
- Sing on an open “ah” and move one note at a time. Hold each note until it shows as counted, then move on.
What to do with your vocal range
Pick songs that fit. Look up a song’s lowest and highest melody notes and compare them with your result. If the song goes higher than your top held note, it will feel strained.
Change the key. Most songs can be moved up or down. If a song is a few notes too high, lowering the key by the same number of semitones usually fixes it — karaoke apps and sheet-music sites can do this for you.
Find your choir part. Your closest voice type points to a part: sopranos sing soprano, mezzo-sopranos and contraltos usually sing alto, tenors sing tenor, and baritones and basses usually sing bass. See voice type vs choir part.
Track your progress. Retest every few weeks if you are training. Expect the notes you can hold to grow slowly, mostly at the edges of what you already have.
