VIII Pitch & the singing ear · Chapter 1
Find your range
Use your microphone to map your lowest and highest comfortable notes — and learn what that does (and doesn't) tell you.
Before training pitch, it helps to know your territory: the span of notes your voice can comfortably produce. That’s your vocal range, and mapping it gives every later exercise a home base.
Warm up first
Range measured on a cold voice reads low and narrow. Do two minutes of lip trills or humming (the warm-up chapter) before you start, and you’ll get a truer picture.
Map it
Enable the microphone below, then:
- Hum or sing a comfortable note — any note, medium volume, a clear “ah” or a hum.
- Slide downward in small steps. Stay relaxed; stop where the note becomes a crackle or disappears. Don’t press — the bottom of your range is found, not forced.
- Come back to the middle, then slide upward. Let the voice get lighter as it rises. Stop at the point where you’d have to strain. Straining isn’t range — it’s the edge beyond your range.
The strip tracks the lowest and highest stable notes it hears. A few attempts across a session (and across days) give a more honest picture than one pass.
This exercise listens to your voice.
Audio is analyzed live in your browser and never recorded or uploaded.
What the result means
A typical untrained range spans about 1.5 to 2 octaves; trained singers often have more. The voice-type comparison the tool shows (bass, baritone, tenor, alto, mezzo, soprano) is based on the standard reference ranges used in pedagogy — but treat it as a hint, for one important reason:
Voice classification is about comfort, not extremes. Two singers can share the same range while one is clearly a tenor and the other a baritone — what differs is the tessitura, the region where each voice sits happily for a whole song. Real classification also weighs timbre and where the voice shifts register, which no range test can capture. Don’t rush to label yourself; sing where it’s comfortable, and let the label emerge.
Recap
- Your range is the span from your lowest to highest comfortable note — warm up before measuring it.
- Find the bottom by relaxing down, the top by lightening up. Strain is past the edge, not part of the range.
- Voice-type labels from range alone are hints; tessitura (where the voice is comfortable) matters more.
- Range grows with gentle consistent work — re-measure monthly.