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When I, a male singer, look at melodies in hymnals the lowest notes seem to be Bb2 and A2. Those are very low for me. Bb2 is very difficult for me to sing.

It seems that most people, whether singing experts or not, think that men should find Bb2 much easier to sing than G4. But for me, a high tenor, G4 is actually much easier.

I have even met tenors who assumed that I would find Bb2 easy. I have often thought that I had very bad technique since tenors I have met sing low notes.

Should tenors find Bb2 an easy note to sing? Isn't Bb2 and A2 only easy for lower tenor?

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    I had a friend who was scraping the bottom at C3. You may be part of a small minority of tenors, but it's not that rare.
    – phoog
    Jul 13 at 20:18

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Your lower cut-off (though it probably isn't actually a cut-off, more a 'best above') does seem to be just slightly higher than average. You might not contribute much to a unison passage when it strays down there, but no biggie!

For solo repertoire, you might prefer to sing a step higher than the 'standard' tenor key. That's OK too. But check where it puts the top notes, that's where the 'money note' of a song is more likely to sit :-)

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    I often hear people saying that C3-C4 is easy for men. But C3 can actually feel very low at times. So the lower you sing the easier it should be?
    – harry jansson
    Jul 14 at 9:32
  • @harryjansson This isn't an answer to your question, but relates to your comment here. I also often hear people saying that C3-C4 is easy for men (and C4-C5 for women). A range of C-C is recommended for music intended to be sung by groups of untrained singers (e.g. congregations). It's not the same situation because I'm a woman, but until I started seriously learning to sing, I couldn't sing either C3 or C5 and consequently I couldn't sing along with congregations a lot of the time.
    – notmySOaccount
    Aug 28 at 19:00

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