A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Register (scale)

REGISTER is now employed to denote a portion of the scale. The 'soprano register,' the 'tenor register,' denote that part of the scale which forms the usual compass of those voices; the 'head register' means the notes which are sung with the head voice; the 'chest register,' those which are sung from the chest; the 'upper register' is the higher portion of the compass of an instrument or voice, and so on. How it came to have this meaning, the writer has not been able to discover.

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