Vocal range test: what's my range?
Free, no sign-up, nothing recorded. Get your lowest and highest easy notes on a card for your teacher.
Sing only easy notes, and stop if anything strains or hurts.
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Your vocal range
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Find your lowest and highest easy notes. Your range shows here.
Over 3 octaves. Play each end again and check it's the note you sang, in the right octave.
This is an example, not your voice. Set your own notes to print a card.
Notes you held and said were comfortable today. Not a voice type.
How the vocal range test works
You can do the whole test by ear. Tap a key and it plays for about a second, then sing it back on "ah". Step down a half step at a time until the next note stops feeling easy, and mark the last one that felt fine. Then do the same going up. The test counts the half steps between your two notes (some books call them semitones) and splits them into octaves: A2 to E4 comes out at 19 half steps, an octave and 7 more.
The microphone is the other way in, and it's optional. Nothing listens until you press its button, on every visit, even if your browser remembers that you said yes last time. Hold an easy "ah" for about a second. The test waits for a held note, then asks you to check it before it goes on your card. Only keep notes that felt easy, however proud of that squeak you are.
The test looks at the sound in slices about a twentieth of a second long and finds the pattern that repeats. How long that pattern lasts gives the pitch. The method comes from Philip McLeod and Geoff Wyvill at the University of Otago. The test allows for vibrato by taking the middle of the wobble over a whole second.
Then comes the part we care about most. A microphone can hear a voice an octave too high: on a test tone whose own note was far quieter than its first overtone, ours read an octave up, and a real voice can do the same. So the test doesn't take its own word for it. It plays back the note it heard and asks whether that's what you sang, and if it's off, one tap moves it a half step or an octave either way. A pitch that sits right between two notes gets offered as both, and you pick. Nothing reaches your card until you say yes.
You leave with two notes, the distance between them and how each one was found. You won't get a voice type, a score or a famous singer to measure yourself against.
Who this is for
You might have a first voice lesson booked and want an answer ready when the teacher asks where your voice sits. You might be new to a choir and have been asked which part you sing, or be a parent whose kid wants lessons. If you're teaching yourself and keep giving up on songs that sit too high, two notes give you something to check a key against. And if you teach voice, it's an easy way to have new students walk in with a dated card.
Singer questions about vocal range
Does vocal range include falsetto?
It can, depending on why you're measuring it. You can mark a falsetto note in this test, but it can't tell which register you used. For countertenors, trained falsetto can be part of their working voice. If your top note was falsetto or head voice, tell your teacher, or jot it under Teacher's notes on the printed card so they know what you measured.
How do I find my vocal range without a piano?
Use the keyboard in the test. Every key plays its note for about a second, so you can sing along without owning an instrument or reading music. Start on a note you'd hum without thinking, step down a half step at a time until the next one stops feeling easy, then go back and do the same going up. If you can't hear anything, check the volume and make sure your phone isn't on silent.
Is middle C C4?
Yes, in scientific pitch notation, the system the test uses. Middle C is C4, and the A above it is A4, the 440 Hz tuning note. If an app or keyboard numbers its octaves another way, go by the key itself: middle C is the C between the treble and bass staffs, near the middle of a piano. The card prints "middle C = C4" so your teacher reads your notes the way you meant them.
Are online vocal range tests accurate?
Naming the pitch is the easy part. On test tones at every key from C2 to C7, ours named the right note every time, within a tenth of a cent. The hard part is the octave, which is why the test plays back each note it heard and waits for your yes. And no test can tell an easy note from a strained one. That call is yours, so only mark notes that felt easy.
Can kids take a vocal range test?
Yes, with a grown-up nearby to keep it easy. Kids' voices change as they grow, especially during puberty, so treat any result as a snapshot. That's why the card carries the date. The rule is the same as for adults: only easy notes count, and stop at the first sign of strain. The name box is optional and appears only on the printed or copied card.
Is my vocal range good?
There's no good or bad range here, and the test won't score you. Range is one of the things a voice teacher listens for, but range alone doesn't sort voices: where your voice is most comfortable and how it sounds matter too. Two notes you can hold easily are a solid start. Test again in a few months, and a teacher holding both dated cards can see what moved.
What if the microphone gets my note wrong?
Fix it before you keep it. After each take the test plays the note it heard. If that isn't what you sang, tap Half step lower or Half step higher, or Octave lower or Octave higher, and it plays the new note so you can check again. If your pitch sat right between two notes, you'll hear both and pick one. Nothing goes on your card until you tap "Yes, that's my note".
Does the test record my voice?
No. The microphone stays off until you press "Test my range with the microphone", on every visit, even if your browser remembers that you allowed it. While it's on, the test looks at a twentieth of a second of sound at a time, works out the pitch and lets it go. Nothing is recorded, saved or sent. Switch tabs, go three minutes without singing or set both notes by singing them, and the microphone switches off. If you set a note on the keyboard, press "Stop the microphone" when you're done.
How to find your vocal range
Pick a quiet room and a time when your voice has already been talking for a while. If you usually warm up before singing, do it first, then say so in the card details so your teacher knows.
Begin on a note you'd hum without thinking. Go down a half step at a time, singing each note back on "ah", and stop at the last one that's clear and steady without pushing. That's your lowest. Come back to the middle and do the same going up. Your highest is the last note you can hold easily, not the one you can squeak out once.
Do it once and mark it. Chasing one more note at either end is exactly how a range test turns into strain, and the card is more useful to a teacher when it shows notes you could sing again tomorrow.
Why two notes don't make a voice type
Voice teachers don't sort voices by range alone. Two singers can share the same lowest and highest notes and still be a soprano and a mezzo-soprano. A teacher also listens for where the voice is most comfortable most of the time, called tessitura, and what it sounds like. Both come through when you sing, and neither fits in two note names, so the card leaves the label to the teacher. A choir director can use the card as a starting point, then hear you sing and check which part fits.
Sources and last checked
- Note names and frequencies: Tamara Smyth's UCSD teaching material and the MIDI Association; scientific pitch notation, middle C = C4, f = 440 x 2^((n - 69) / 12) for note number n; note table version 2026-10-07.
- Standard tuning frequency, A4 = 440 Hz: ISO 16:1975, Acoustics - Standard tuning frequency (Standard musical pitch), section 2.1.
- Pitch detection: Philip McLeod and Geoff Wyvill, "A Smarter Way to Find Pitch", University of Otago, 2005.
- Range and voice type: the American Academy of Teachers of Singing's Classification of the Singing Voice (1957); countertenor registers: Jerod Reetz's original interviews (2018).
- Changing voices: Nemours KidsHealth. Voice care: NIDCD.
- Microphone and audio behavior: W3C Media Capture and Streams (Candidate Recommendation Draft, October 9, 2025) and Web Audio API 1.1 (Working Draft, September 22, 2026).
- Accuracy figures: measured by us on synthetic test tones at 44,100 and 48,000 samples per second.
- Last checked: October 7, 2026.
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