How to Get Vocal Ranges

Singers can achieve vocal ranges, also known as registers, through appropriate and healthy singing techniques. Using unhealthy singing techniques will hamper your voice, create tension in the folds and prevent you from singing your full range and register. Learning to sing with proper breath support will also help improve your range and make it possible to sing the full gamut of music available for your voice type. Avoid singing without warming up or attempting to extend your voice through unhealthy techniques such as belting.

Step 1

Find the lowest note in your overall range. Using a piano, start on middle C if you are a female; if you are male, start five notes lower on F. Write down the lowest singable note in your range.

Step 2

Sing in half steps starting on your lowest note. When you notice a change in the quality of your voice when you sing a specific note, write down that note. All vocalists have passagios—the change in your vocal register—in different places in their voices. Singers have several passagios.

Step 3

Ascend through the remaining portion of your range, taking note every time you feel a change in your register. A passagio should occur between the low and middle ranges, the middle and high ranges and the high and extreme ranges.

Tips

Middle C is the white key to the left of the pair of black keys in the middle of the piano. The F below middle C is the white key to the left of the triple set of black keys.

Passagio—the point at which the vocal register switches between high, medium and low—is generally a single pitch in which the quality of the voice changes.

Warnings

Start with a warm-up before attempting to sing any of these exercises.

References

Vocalist: Passagio—Introduction to vocal transition points [http://www.vocalist.org.uk/passaggio.html]