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A band of pitches in an instrument or voice, such as low, middle or high. On the organ, a register is a stop: a rank of pipes of one tone colour.
Register changes colour as much as pitch: a flute is breathy and soft at the bottom and brilliant at the top; a clarinet is dark in its low chalumeau register and veiled around the break. Choose registers for balance — a melody in a weak low register needs a thin accompaniment — and move between them to build or release tension. Moving a theme up an octave often does more than adding instruments.
Register is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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