Voice type test

Soprano, mezzo, alto, tenor, baritone or bass – your voice type is simply the name of the line your voice fits most comfortably. This test finds yours in about two minutes: sing your lowest comfortable note, then your highest, and the same pitch detector that powers the Cadence practice app works out which type your range sits closest to.

Best with headphones off and the room reasonably quiet. Sing “ah” at a medium volume.

The six voice types

Four-part choral music asks for soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Add the two types that most people actually are – mezzo-soprano and baritone – and you have the six a test can reasonably tell apart.

Voice type	Typical range
Soprano	C4 – C6	The top line. Sopranos carry the tune most of the time, which sounds like a privilege until you notice how exposed it leaves you – everyone hears a soprano who is flat.
Mezzo-soprano	A3 – A5	The most common female voice, and the one most often mislabelled. A mezzo asked to sing soprano all evening will get tired and sharp; the same singer on the alto line will feel like she is muttering.
Alto	F3 – F5	Lower female voice, richest in the middle. In cathedral choirs the alto line is also sung by men – countertenors – which is the oldest evidence that these labels were never about gender.
Tenor	C3 – C5	Higher male voice, and the one choirs are always short of. Tenors often get the melody when the sopranos do not, and spend a lot of time near the top of their comfortable range.
Baritone	A2 – A4	The most common male voice by a distance. Most men who assume they are a bass are baritones who can reach a few low notes on a good morning.
Bass	E2 – E4	The low anchor the whole chord is built on. Genuinely rare, and choirs will fight over you.

Ranges in scientific pitch notation – C4 is middle C. Typical, not gospel: real voices blur every boundary.

The label is softer than it looks

Notice how much those ranges overlap. A tenor and an alto share nearly two octaves of common ground; a mezzo could sing most soprano lines and most alto lines without ever leaving her comfortable range. Almost nobody sits cleanly inside exactly one box.

That is because real classification is not only about range. A teacher listens for where your voice changes gear, where the tone opens out and rings without effort, and how long you can stay up high before it tires – none of which a microphone can judge. Two singers with an identical range can be different voice types, and both be right.

So treat a test result as a strong suggestion about where to start, not a verdict. The useful question is never “what am I?” but “which line can I sing well for two hours on a Thursday night?”

Voice type is not gender

The names describe lines of music, not the people singing them. Men have sung the alto line in cathedral and collegiate choirs for centuries – countertenors – and women sing tenor in plenty of choirs without anybody blinking. If a test hands you a label you did not expect, it has told you something about the notes you sang, and nothing whatsoever about you.

It is worth saying plainly because the labels carry old associations that the music never did. A low female voice is not a defect and a high male voice is not a curiosity; both are lines that need singing, and choirs are usually short of exactly the ones people are shy about claiming.

What to do with your result

The label is most useful for three practical things: which line to ask for at a choir audition, which key to look for when you buy sheet music, and where in your range to spend practice time. It is least useful as an identity – the singers who improve fastest are the ones who stop defending a category and start making the notes they already own land in tune.