Range
The span from the lowest to the highest note available
Related
Range is the span from the lowest to the highest note available on an instrument or voice: it answers "how far can it go", not "where does it usually sit". It can be sounding pitch or written pitch (transposing instruments must say which).
It differs from tessitura: range is the limit, tessitura the centre of gravity; it also differs from register: register is the colour layering inside the range. The usual mistake is to think a wider range is better — width is not expressiveness; what decides difficulty is tessitura and register changes.
Read deeper → tessitura
Sources
- 音域的定义与记谱，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Range"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.