The CoMMUNITY SINGer

Hello, and welcome back to episode seven of The Community Singer - finding your voice type.

So today we're going to look at recognised voice types. We are often asked how people can find their voice type because if you've never done any singing, how would you know what you are? There are several defining factors associated with how you find what type of voice you are.

This is all linked to whether you are genetically a male or a female voice. The four main voice classifications used in classical singing are Bass, Tenor, Alto, and Soprano.

Within those four classifications, there are also subdivisions of some other voices that you may have heard of. For example, Baritone or Mezzo Soprano.

In order to help you find what your voice type is, We're going to demonstrate the four main voice types. So sing along with us and see which fits best with your voice.

Ok,  we're gonna start with Bass, which I think I'll take this one, Abi.

So, it starts on a low D. That's a D2 for those who know, and that's the second octave on the piano. I'm go sing it to ‘la’, and I'm gonna go chromatically, which is all the notes on the piano. And it goes, ‘la, la, la’ etc.

Take a breath. We're still going - which is E4. It actually goes a lot higher than you think for a bass voice, doesn't it?

It does. And the thing to remember is you don't have to have all of those notes in order to class yourself as a base. You could start a couple of notes from the bottom and end a couple of notes down. But if you're generally comfortable in and around that range, then you can class yourself as that voice type.

Let's move on to the next.

Now the base crosses over into the tenor range. The tenor range starts from C3, that's the third octave. ‘La, la, la’ etc

Take a breath , up to B4.

So as you can hear there, Ross, changed his voice over. So he hit his register. He hit his break point, which we've discussed already in one of the previous episodes and he had to make a change therefore into his head voice. Otherwise, known in male voices, as falsetto. That was so he could still access those higher notes of a tenor even though they don't sit comfortably in his full voice range. Therefore, Ross would class himself as ab base.

So now we move on to the genetically female voice types, let’s start with alto. This is the lower female voice type.

So the alto goes from F3 up to F5. ‘La, la, la’ etc.

There we go.

Sounds high for an alto, doesn't it?

It does sound high for an alto because this is a classical range and so if you were a classical singer, you would be expected to be able to sing up to that top F. However, you wouldn't be singing that all the time.

Great, what’s next?

So the final one we're going to sing is the top voice, the highest voice in the range, and that one is the soprano.

Let's give that one a go.

Okay, so the soprano range goes from a B3 up to an E6. So here we go.

Abi's going to stop there, but the range continues to E3.

But as we said before, you don't have to sing all of those notes, just where you feel relatively comfortable within the range.

It's not just how high or how low you can sing that defines your voice type. As you can hear, there's a wide range of notes for each of the voice types. So what also defines what voice type you are is the colour of your voice. By that, which talking about the thickness or the thinness of the Vocal Timbre. If you're a soprano, you will have a thinner lighter voice in comparison to an Alto whose voice type will be a lot thicker and warmer in sound.

And if you're a bass like me, you'll have a thicker, darker voice compared to a tenor, you'll have a thinner lighter voice.

However, it's good to remember this doesn't always translate into the spoken voice. Someone could have quite a deep speaking voice, but be a soprano or a tenor. Hopefully, you've got a better idea of your voice type now from that demonstration.

And remember, with practice, you can extend the range higher and lower.

In fact, you might even end up changing voice type completely.

We'll see you next time.