Tell it where your voice is comfortable and where the song sits, and get the transposition that fits — named as a key, not a number.
“It’s a bit high for me” is not an actionable note. What you need is a number: how many semitones down, and which key that lands on. This takes four pitches — the lowest and highest note you sing comfortably, and the lowest and highest note the song actually uses — and works out the shift that puts the top of the melody inside your range with some headroom left. It also tells you the case nobody likes: when the song spans more than your voice does, no key fits, and the honest answer is to reshape the melody rather than move it.
Headroom is how many semitones below your top note the melody should peak. Two is a sensible default; use three or four if the high notes are sustained.
Set the four notes and find the key.
Why headroom is the setting that matters
A note you can hit once is not a note you can sing eight times in a set. If a melody peaks exactly at the top of your range, every performance becomes a negotiation with that one note, and the songs after it pay for it. Leaving two semitones between the top of the melody and the top of your comfortable range costs you almost nothing musically and buys back a lot of reliability.
The other number worth reading is the span. If the song covers more semitones than your voice does, transposition cannot fix it: moving it down to fit the top pushes the bottom below you, and moving it up does the reverse. That is not a failure of the key, it is a mismatch between the shape of the melody and the shape of the voice, and the fix is in the writing — usually a different contour on one line rather than a new key.
How to use the result
- Use the “play my range” button to hear your lowest and highest note before you set them. Guessing your own range from memory is how people end up two semitones out.
- Read the shift as a key name, not a number. “Down three” is hard to hand to a guitarist; “now in B flat” is not.
- If the table shows several keys that all fit, pick the one your players are happiest in. For guitar, G, D, A, C and E are the comfortable ones.
- Recheck after a few weeks of singing it. Ranges move, and a key chosen at the start of a rehearsal period is often a semitone high by the end.
- When the tool says the song is wider than your range, believe it. Lowering the key will bury the low lines instead.
Questions people ask
- Why does it not call me a tenor or an alto?
Because voice classification depends on timbre, tessitura and where your register breaks, none of which a four-note range tells you. Labelling someone from a span is a guess dressed up as a fact, so the tool reports the range and leaves the naming alone.
- What if the song is wider than my range?
The tool says so plainly and centres the melody on your range rather than pretending a key fits. You will get both the top and the bottom flagged, and the fix is a change to the melody rather than a transposition.
- Does the key change affect the chords?
Yes, of course, and this tool does not rewrite them. Take the named key to your chord chart and transpose it with the capo and key converter if you want the chord names worked out.
- How much headroom should I use?
Two semitones for a melody that touches its top note briefly. Three or four if the top note is held, repeated, or sung loud, and more again if you are singing several sets in a day.
What this tool does not do. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and it works with the internet switched off. It works entirely from the four pitches you enter, so if those are wrong the answer is wrong — and most people overestimate their top note by a semitone or two. It has no notion of timbre, register breaks or tessitura, and it is not a substitute for a teacher. See the site disclaimer. Written by Nico, who builds these tools and writes about writing at WrittenTone.