Vocal ranges / Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney vocal range: A1 to C6

Paul McCartney's documented vocal range runs from A1 to C6, a span of about 4 octaves and 3 semitones. Paul McCartney is usually described as a tenor.

Lowest noteA1, in "The Girl Is Mine"
Highest noteC6, in falsetto, in "Cut Me Some Slack"
Span4 octaves and 3 semitones
Voice typetenor

How does your range compare with Paul McCartney's?

Measure your own lowest and highest notes with the free vocal range test, then come back to this page to see how much of Paul McCartney's range you cover.

Test my vocal range

Paul McCartney and the tenor range

The typical tenor range is C3 to C5, so the documented notes reach 15 semitones below and 12 semitones above it. A wide documented range does not change a singer's voice type: the type describes where the voice is most comfortable, and the extremes are often reached only once or twice, in a studio or on a good night.

Where these notes come from

The notes on this page are taken from The Range Planet, a community forum that documents singers' notes song by song (archived copy). We did not measure them ourselves. We also read the 2014 Concert Hotels chart. The 2014 Concert Hotels chart lists B1 to B5. The highest note marked as full voice is B5.

Published ranges count every note a singer has been recorded producing, including falsetto, whistle notes and very low spoken or growled notes where the source includes them. The range a singer uses comfortably in most songs is narrower.

Can you learn to sing in Paul McCartney's range?

You can extend your own range with regular, gentle practice, a note at a time at each end. Whether you can reach these exact notes depends on your voice type. A song that sits too high or too low for you can always be sung in a different key. Start with 5 tips to improve your vocal range, or find your voice type first.

Other tenors