Contents
- 01Range, tessitura and extension: three words that aren't the same
- 02The six classical voices: a map, not a label
- 03What the chart leaves out
- 04Your highest note doesn't define your type
- 05The passaggio as a fingerprint
- 06Why it's better not to classify yourself early
- 07In popular music there are no types: there are keys
- 08Measuring your range without tricks
- 09Choosing a song's key with your tessitura
- 10What you do with the result in the app
- 11Your range moves, and that's fine
- 12Three myths worth letting go
- 13What you take with you
Your voice type: range, tessitura and classification
What your tessitura is, what your voice type does and doesn't tell you, and how to measure your range without fooling yourself.
What you'll learn
In this lesson you'll get to know your voice without boxing it into a label: which notes you can sing, where you sing comfortably, and why that matters more than the name of your voice type. By the end you'll be able to measure your range honestly and choose a song's key so it fits you well.
What you'll need
About 22 minutes and a place where you can sing freely, from low to high, without worrying about who's listening. You'll use the app's Vocal range tool, which records your lowest and highest notes, and the 'Measuring ladder' MIDI (a file that tells the app which notes to play), which climbs one semitone at a time so you can notice where your voice stays comfortable. If you like, a notebook or your phone to write down your results; nothing else.
If you're just starting
If you're just starting out, this lesson gives you a map of your own voice, and that map helps with everything that comes next: choosing songs, vocalizing in the right zone and extending your range without forcing. And some reassurance right away: you don't need to classify yourself to sing well. Plenty of people sing beautifully without knowing whether they're a tenor or a baritone; what you need is to know where you're comfortable, and we'll find that step by step.
Words you'll come across
- Range
- All the notes your voice can make, from the lowest to the highest, even if some sound thin.
- Tessitura
- The part of your range where you sing comfortably and with a good sound; it's what counts when you choose songs.
- Extension
- The notes at the edges that you gain with technique: they already exist, but you wouldn't use them in a song yet.
- Passaggio
- The zone where your voice shifts gears and sometimes cracks; where it falls says a lot about your voice type.
- Timbre
- Your voice's own color, brighter or darker, the thing that lets people recognize you without seeing you.
- Key
- The pitch level a song is built on; the same song can sound higher or lower.
- Transpose
- Moving a whole song higher or lower without it stopping being the same song.
- Preset
- A ready-made span of notes in the app for your vocalization exercises: Low, Mid or High.