Ray Charles
Tenor · Soul · R&B · Blues · USA · prominent since 1954
What is Ray Charles’s vocal range?
Ray Charles's vocal range is commonly cited as C2 to A#5 (Bb5) — about 3.8 octaves, or 46 semitones, and is usually classified as tenor. Full voice is cited up to around A4; everything above that comes from falsetto or head voice.
Gospel-schooled tenor with a rough edge, bending pitch and dragging behind the beat on purpose. That cited span is wider than 95% of the 357 voices in this library.
- Signature song
- Georgia on My Mind
Reading the numbers
- C2 is a deep floor for a tenor — lower than all but 1 of the 127 tenors here.
- Only 4 singers here are cited below C2.
- 13 semitones — 28% of the whole span — sit above the cited full-voice ceiling, so much of this range is head voice, falsetto or whistle rather than chest.
- That floor is a full 12 semitones beneath where a tenor's range conventionally starts (C3).
- The ceiling clears the conventional tenor top of C5 by 10 semitones.
Commonly cited figures, not lab measurements — extreme notes are one-off recorded moments, not the singer’s everyday range.
Take the free 2-minute range test — your mic finds your lowest and highest notes, then this page shows exactly how your voice lines up with Ray Charles’s.
Also topping out on A#5
43 other voices here reach the same ceiling.