Place a whole class in one period
Your students sing two notes each, you write both down, and by the end of the hour you know who belongs where. The measuring is done by the range test, which is free and runs in a browser tab. The part that was missing is everything around it, the routine, the paper, and something to actually sing once they are placed.
Free starter
$0
- The twenty-five minute placement routine
- Class record sheet, thirty singers
- Three pages, print as many as you like
The shop asks for an email so it can send the file. Take the PDF directly if you would rather not give one.
Full kit
$6
- Everything in the starter
- Cut-out range cards, six per sheet
- Part reference chart with the written spans
- 268 songs with their measured singing range and the parts each one fits
- Seventeen pages, one classroom licence
What the song table is, and why it took so long
Every span in it was computed from transcriptions of the original recording. A song only made it in if at least two independent transcriptions of the vocal line agree within a major third. That kept 324 of 3,750. Another 56 came out because they have no place in a school room, lyrics, another language, an instrumental, a duplicate. 268 are left.
Sorted narrowest first, because that is the useful order for a class. 39 of them live inside eight semitones or less, which means a whole room can sing them at one pitch without anyone straining. The narrowest is Takin' Care of Business, C4 to E4.
The table is in the original recorded key. Move the key and the parts that fit move with it, which is what the transposing page is for, and it is also free.
What is wrong with it
Transcriptions get octaves wrong. About one pair in five disagrees by roughly an octave, which is a machine error rather than a musical one. I drop those pairs instead of correcting them, because correcting means guessing, and a guess printed as a measurement is worse than a gap. The visible consequence is that the table leans toward songs whose melody sits in the easy middle, where transcribers agree with each other.
The kit also will not tell you someone is an alto. It gives you a first sort from range alone, which is right far more often than a guess and wrong often enough that you should listen to the five you were least sure about the following week. That sentence is in the kit too.
Who this is for
It was written for a first-year choir teacher with a class of twenty-five and one period to get through them. If you have been doing this for fifteen years you already have a routine and you do not need mine. The song table might still be worth six dollars to you, since nobody else has published one.