A glossary for singers

Vocal teaching runs on borrowed words. Half of them arrived from three different traditions that never agreed with each other, and the rest describe a sensation rather than a mechanism. This page takes the 42 that turn up in this app — on the range result, in the studio readout, across the singer pages — and gives each one a single sentence, plus the place it shows up so the definition has somewhere to land.

Definitions only. No exercise is prescribed here — the warmups and the range test do that part, and none of this is medical advice.

Pitch and notation

The units every number in the app is quoted in.

Scientific pitch notation

also SPN · C4 notation

The letter-and-number way of naming one exact pitch, where C4 is middle C and the number ticks over at every C rather than at every A.

Every range figure in the app is written this way — your own low and high notes, and every singer's cited span. Open the range test →

Semitone

also Half step

The smallest step in Western tuning: one piano key to the next, black keys included.

Song transposition is counted in semitones, and warmup scores show the semitone where your accuracy starts to drop. Open song practice →

Cent

One hundredth of a semitone, the unit the pitch readout uses for how far off a note landed.

The studio's gauge shows cents live; under about five is inaudible to most listeners, twenty or more reads clearly as out of tune. Open the pitch studio →

Sharp and flat

also ♯ · ♭

Sharp means the note came out above the pitch you were aiming at, flat means below.

The studio's two pills say which side of the target you are on while you hold a note. Open the pitch studio →

Octave

The distance between a note and the next note with the same letter name — twelve semitones, at double the frequency.

Your range test reports the span in octaves, and the keyboard on the result marks each one. Open the range test →

Interval

The distance between two pitches, named by how many scale steps it covers — a third, a fifth, an octave.

Ear training plays intervals and asks you to name or sing them back. Open ear training →

Fundamental frequency

also f0

The rate at which your vocal folds repeat their cycle, which is the pitch a listener hears.

Pitch detection estimates the fundamental from the waveform, then converts it to the nearest note plus a deviation in cents. Open the pitch studio →

Harmonic

also Overtone · Partial

One of the whole-number multiples of the fundamental that sound above every sung note and decide its colour.

The spectrogram draws one sung note as a stack of lines: the fundamental, then its harmonics. Open the analyzer →

A440

also Concert pitch

The tuning standard where the A above middle C is 440 Hz, which is what every tool here uses.

The drone, the piano and the pitch detector are all referenced to A440, the same as the recordings you sing along to. Open tools →

Registers and the break

Different ways of setting up the vocal folds, and the seam between them.

Register

A way of setting up the vocal folds — length, thickness and how firmly they close — that handles one band of pitches well and gives out above it.

The range test's climb crosses at least one register change, and the singer pages describe voices as chest-dominant or head-dominant. Open the range test →

Chest voice

The thicker, shorter fold setup you speak in, so called because low notes buzz sympathetically in the sternum.

The range test asks you to stop pushing chest voice upward once the top starts feeling like a wall. Open the range test →

Head voice

The lighter, stretched fold setup above the break, which still rings at volume when the folds close firmly.

Warmup exercises that climb past your transition are asking for head voice rather than more effort. Open warmups →

Falsetto

A stretched fold setup with incomplete closure, which is why it sounds airy and resists being sung loudly.

The range test counts falsetto as part of your range, and singer pages flag voices whose top is falsetto rather than full. Open the range test →

Mix

also Mixed voice

The middle ground between chest and head — part fold setup, part vowel and resonance — where the transition can be crossed without a seam.

Singer technique notes describe voices climbing into mix at a named note instead of belting through it. Open the singer library →

Whistle register

A setup above head voice in which only a short section of the folds vibrates, giving a thin, flute-like tone.

The records page lists the whistle notes in the library; most voices never have one, and nothing depends on it. Open the records page →

Vocal fry

also Creak

The rattling, popping sound the folds make below the bottom of a sung range, with no steady pitch to it.

The range test asks you not to count fry as your low note — the floor is the lowest note you can hold clearly. Open the range test →

Passaggio

also The break · Transition zone

The two-to-four-note zone where the voice has to hand over from one fold setup to the next, which is where cracks and sudden thinning happen.

Slide slowly up through the zone and the pitch trace shows what the voice does at the transition; the same dip turning up at the same semitone every session is a passaggio rather than a limit. Open the pitch studio →

Belt

also Belting

Carrying a chest-dominant sound above the point where the voice would normally lighten, brightened rather than pushed.

Singer pages mark a belt note separately from the ceiling, because the top of a range is often not belted at all. Open the singer library →

Range and voice type

What a range figure does and does not claim.

Vocal range

The span between the lowest and highest notes you can sing with a clear, usable tone.

The range test reports yours as two notes and a span, and every singer page states theirs the same way. Open the range test →

Tessitura

Where a voice sits comfortably for most of a song, which is a different claim from the range it can reach.

Song fit is checked against your whole range, so a song can sit inside it and still spend every chorus in a part of the voice you would rather not live in — that is tessitura, and transposing is the fix. Open song practice →

Voice type

One of the eight conventional labels, soprano through bass, for the band a voice sits in and the weight it carries.

The range result names the type whose band overlaps your span most closely, and the singer library files every voice by type. Open the range test →

Transposition

also Transposing

Moving a whole song up or down by a fixed number of semitones, which changes the key without changing the tune.

Song practice transposes the backing to land the melody where your voice is comfortable. Open song practice →

Breath, tone and measurement

The words for what the tools are actually watching.

Breath support

also Support

Keeping the air pressure under the folds steady while the lungs empty — a management job rather than a strength one.

The sustain test scores steadiness alongside duration, because a long note that wobbles is not a supported one. Open breath control →

Vibrato

The small, regular pitch oscillation a relaxed sustained note settles into, usually a few times a second.

On the spectrogram, a steady ripple in the harmonic stack is vibrato; the stack jumping instead is a register change. Open the analyzer →

Resonance

also The vocal tract · The filter

The throat and mouth shaping the buzz from the folds into a vowel and a colour, without changing the pitch.

Hold one note and change vowel: the trace stays on the same line while the spectrogram redraws. Open the analyzer →

Singer's formant

A concentration of energy around 3 kHz found in many trained classical voices, and the standard explanation for carrying over an orchestra unamplified.

The tone panel draws that band as a gold column and reports its share of the plotted energy — a number to compare against your own takes, not a target. Open the analyzer →

Spectrogram

A display of every frequency present in your voice, plotted against time.

The analyzer draws one, so a bright or dark tone becomes something you can point at instead of describe. Open the analyzer →

Vocal dose

also Cycle dose

A measure of how much work the folds have done, counted in vibration cycles rather than minutes, because a minute sung high costs far more than a minute sung low.

The vocal-load panel counts cycles while you practice. Open the analyzer →

Drone

A continuously sustained reference pitch you sing against; when your note is slightly off, the two tones beat audibly.

The drone in Tools is the fastest way to hear intonation errors that a screen would have to tell you about. Open tools →

Lip trill

also Lip bubble

Blowing air through loosely closed lips so they flutter while you sing, which makes clear tone cheap for a cold voice.

Several warmups run on lip trills, and they are hard to blast through — the trill stops if you push. Open warmups →

Siren

A slow slide up and down through the voice on one vowel, without stopping at any note.

Warmup sirens are the standard way to find a register transition and then smooth it. Open warmups →

Twang

also Epilaryngeal narrowing

A bright, carrying resonance made by narrowing the space just above the vocal folds, which adds high-frequency energy rather than volume.

The warmups that run on nay and gug are twang exercises, and the analyzer shows the change as energy arriving in the upper bands while the pitch trace holds its line. Open warmups →

Pressed phonation

also Pressed voice · Hyperfunction

Voicing produced with more vocal-fold compression than the note needs, heard as a tight or squeezed tone rather than a louder one.

Lessons use the word and nothing in Suede measures it: the tone panel's ring share is a self-relative resonance number rather than a strain reading, so no figure here can confirm or rule out pressing. Open the analyzer →

Onset

also Attack

How a note starts — breath before tone, breath and tone together, or a click as the folds release.

In the studio the pitch trace arrives a moment late on a breathy onset and starts already on the note on a glottal one. Open the pitch studio →

Vowel

The shape of the vocal tract that sets which frequencies a note is loudest at, colouring it without changing its pitch.

Warmups name the vowel each pattern is sung on, because the same scale on ee and on ah asks different things of the tract. Open warmups →

Colour, tuning and timing

The musical words neither instrument owns, defined once for both.

Tone

also Timbre · Colour

The colour of a sound — which frequencies it is loudest at — as distinct from how high it is or how loud.

The spectrogram is a picture of tone: two takes of one note at the same pitch and the same volume draw different stacks. Open the analyzer →

Intonation

also Tuning

How close a note lands to the pitch it is meant to be.

The studio reports intonation in cents while you hold a note, and ear training scores whether you sang the interval where you heard it. Open ear training →

Dynamics

How loud a passage is and how its loudness moves across it.

The breath room's steadiness score reads loudness rather than pitch, so a deliberate swell and an unsteady note look alike to it. Open breath control →

Legato

Notes joined so that each one ends as the next begins, with no silence between them.

Sirens and glides are legato by definition, and the studio draws them as one unbroken line instead of a row of steps. Open warmups →

Staccato

Notes cut short, with audible silence between them.

Staccato warmup patterns break the pitch trace into separate marks, which is the same picture a lost note makes. Open warmups →

Metronome

also Click · Click track

A steady click at a chosen tempo, counted in beats per minute.

Song practice runs against the tempo you set, so a phrase that only works when you rush it stops working. Open song practice →

Count-in

also Count-off

The beats played before a take begins, so the first note arrives in time instead of being guessed at.

Song practice counts four beats in before the first lyric, which is why a take rarely starts half a beat early. Open song practice →

A sentence is enough to read a page; it is not enough to change how you sing. The Voice Atlas takes the vocabulary above a chapter at a time, and its first 3 are free to read:

• How to read an entry — The anatomy of an atlas entry — what the cited range, the full-voice ceiling, the whistle flag and the sourced extremes actually claim, and how conservative those claims are.
• Notes, octaves and the keyboard — Scientific pitch notation in five minutes — what C4 means, why F#5 and Gb5 are the same note, how octave spans are counted, and why identical voices get different figures.
• Voice types in the wild — What the eight classification labels mean, why a pop mezzo and an opera mezzo are different claims, tessitura versus range, and how to guess your own type without a teacher.

The Measured Voice takes the same ground from the other side — how the voice works, then how to read your own numbers — and its first chapter is free too.