LESSON THREE
Voice Types and Ranges
The range of your voice is determined by the highest and lowest notes you can sing. As mentioned earlier, everybody has a different voice range. However, there are some general categories used to describe typical voice ranges.
In traditional four part vocal writing, voices are broken up into four categories - soprano (highest female voice), alto (lower female voice), tenor (higher male voice) and bass (lowest male voice).
When describing common voice types, these categories can be further subdivided with each of the two female and male voice types dividing into three. The three female voice types are soprano (highest), mezzo soprano (a little lower) and alto or contralto (lowest). The three male voice types are tenor, baritone and bass.
The middle voices (mezzo soprano and baritone) are the most common voices. Another unusual voice type is the male alto. All of these voice types are descriptions of adult voices. Children and teenagers have voices which are not fully developed, so they cannot be classified as a final voice type.
It is a good idea to find out what your range is as soon as you understand how to find the notes on a keyboard. However, it is unwise to classify yourself immediately as any particular voice type. It is always best to consult a singing teacher and work with them for a while before classifying a voice accurately.
Male voices reach their eventual range later than female voices, so young male students may not be able to classify their voice type until they are adults. The most important thing is to know your individual note range and work with it rather than against it by straining to sing higher or lower than is practical for you.
How to Find Your Voice Range
The easiest way to find the highest and lowest notes in your range is to test them against a piano or keyboard. Even if you don’t intend to play any instrument, it is important to understand the layout of a keyboard in order to identify notes and understand the relationship between them.
A keyboard is tuned to concert pitch, which is an international standard for identifying notes. This enables musicians in bands and orchestras to play in tune with each other. When you sing, your perception of pitch may change depending on your state of mind or how tired you are. For this reason, it is important to have a reference from a fixed pitch instrument tuned to concert pitch.
The Keyboard
The black keys always appear in groups of two or three. The note C is often the starting note for relating all other notes to. The C note is a white key. It is always on the left hand side of a group of two black keys.
The C note in the middle of the keyboard is called middle C. This note is in the range of all of the voice types, although it will be towards the top of some male voice ranges and towards the bottom of some female voice ranges.
The Bass Clef
This symbol is called a bass clef. Vocal music for tenor, baritone and bass voices usually uses a bass clef instead of a treble clef.
The Bass Staff
A staff with a bass clef written on it is called a bass staff .
The Grand Staff
When the treble and bass staves are joined together by a line and a bracket, they are
called a grand staff.
Piano music is written on the grand
staff. Four part vocal music can also be written on the grand staff.
Middle C is written just below the treble staff or just above the bass staff on a short line called a ledger line. Any other notes above or below a staff are also written on ledger lines.
The following keyboard diagrams show typical ranges of the six basic voice types. Remember that everyone’s voice range is individual and that your own voice may fall between any of the traditional categories.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that these are voice ranges of fully developed singing voices, so your voice when you start learning to sing may have a smaller range than the ones shown here. Many tenors have larger ranges than the one shown here. Listen to each example to hear the highest and lowest notes of each range.
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12 | Soprano |
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13 | Mezzo Soprano |
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14 | Alto |
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15 | Tenor |
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16 | Baritone |
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17 | Bass |
Matching Pitches
One of the most important aspects of singing is the ability to sing any desired pitch accurately. A good way to develop your pitching ability (called intonation) is to play or have someone else play notes on an instrument (e.g., keyboard) and copy the pitches with your voice. Some people find this easy immediately while others have to work at it for a while before they can do it.
The most important thing is to listen carefully to the pitch being played and to trust your body to be able to produce that pitch. Relax and let the sound come out naturally. The following examples demonstrate this exercise.
They begin with a keyboard playing each pitch. Shortly after, the same note is sung. Following this, each example is repeated with the keyboard playing the pitch and then a space is left for you to reproduce the pitch with your voice.
All of the examples are in * time. Each pitch is a half note (two beats) on the first beat of the bar. The final two beats of each bar are a half note rest. Each pitch is sung with the syllable "la".
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18 | Female |
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19 | Female Practice |
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20 | Male |
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21 | Male Practice |
The Octave
If you listen through both the male and female voice versions of the previous examples, you will notice that the sequence of notes is relatively the same. The male voice example is simply a lower version of the female voice example.
These examples are one octave apart. Although there are only seven different letter names used in music - A, B, C, D, E, F and G - there are various repetitions of these note names at higher and lower pitches.
The following example demonstrates all of the natural notes from A in the bottom space of the bass staff to A on the first ledger line above the treble staff. This covers a range of three octaves. Every time you come to a new A note after going through all the other letter names, the new A note is in a new octave.
Proceeding through all the other pitches, each of them is one octave above the previous note with the same name. For example, middle C is one octave above the C in the second bottom space of the bass staff, the F in the bottom space of the treble staff is one octave below the F on the top line of the treble staff, etc. This is easy to understand by looking at the keyboard.
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