JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Music Theory and Education What exactly does this mean?

It's kinda like asking me how to measure how far you can run today.

Depends how far you ran yesterday, whether you run on a consistent basis, if you have good form, etc. Chances are if you always run 2 miles in 30 minutes, then you will, generally speaking, find it easy to run 2 miles in 30 minutes, and 2 miles would be your 'range'. If you only ever run a block or two, then you won't find it easy to run 2 miles in 30 minutes, and your 'range' might be 3 blocks.

In other words, your range depends on your training, how you warm-up, how often you sing, etc. Generally speaking, your range today should be within a semi-tone or two of your range yesterday.

I know I can sing A3 to A5 today because I do scales every day that include those notes. I would consider A3 my lowest note, even tho I can go lower (to F3 & even below that), because there is little 'life' in the voice lower than the A3. I would consider Bb5 to be my top-most note, even tho I often vocalize to a C6 or Db6, because I cannot sustain those high notes in a song. Twice in my life, when the stars were aligned, I actually sang an F6. That means, on those days, I had a 3 octave range.

But, IMO it's not how much range you have, it's how you use it.

Singing, in my opinion, is about phrasing, about textures in the voice, about expressing something from the heart. Having a relationship to the text & singing covers as tho you wrote them yourself.