Registers & Ranges
The colours of relating
Register: the range of a human voice or a musical instrument; a portion of such a range similarly produced or of the same quality
If you reflect on any of the meaningful relationships in your life, you will likely find deeper and richer sentiments than you have words for. Similarly, if you experience a significant form of harm in these relationships, the weight of your grief or anger may exceed what you can articulate. The biggest connections in our lives are held by the tapestries of vital threads and fibers that weave us together, and knowing how to untangle these elements can help us to unfurl and attend to the full form of the bond between you.
Music provides a vivid analogy for this process. You can loosely but simply discuss the range of any pitched instrument as having three registers: low, middle, and high. And even if you have never played a musical instrument, you will hear any one of a grand piano’s 88 keys as sitting in a higher or lower register. You can learn to listen to your relationships in much the same way.
The high notes are the ones we hear best, often heard in the flutes and violins above the swell of an orchestra, in soaring vocals pitched against the crush of a rock band, or in the melodic right-hand lines of a piano even amidst a left hand full of harmony. In relationships, I call this the social register. These are the roles that we fulfill for each other in ways that are socially recognizable, even from a distance: the couple walking down the street, the students handling a group project, the soccer team taking to the field in uniform. Casually observing any of these social forms yields an immediate impression of what exchanges might occur between the people you see; yet if you have been part of a couple, a group project, or a sports team, you know that the experience within these relationships can vary widely. The social register is not only about what is outwardly done together, but what the doing feels like.
The low notes are the ones that ground us. Ever-present but seldom observed directly, notes played by the bass instruments give meaning to the higher voices by contextualizing them in harmonic roots. Although cellos can carry a favourite melody in their upper register, it is their lower range that lets them carry the bass for a string quartet. More functionally, the motion of bass voices often signals when a phrase or piece in classical music has concluded; in funk music, the stability and repetition of the bass allows melodic instruments to play with jarring or unpredictable rhythms while the audience keeps dancing. The parallel in relationships is found in caregivers: the people who quietly help to sustain each other, running the routines and providing the assistance that keep us going. Professional care workers, domestic households, and compassionate friends are all around us, and their continued presence during disruptive times define the nature of these relationships. I call this the custodial register.
Between the melody of the high notes and the supportive presence of the low ones are the middle sounds where harmony lives. The middle register is where an instrument’s voice typically sounds the most balanced, rich, and expressive, as it sings far from the upper and lower range’s physical extremes. The alto vocalist, trombone, or cello are often called upon for this register in larger ensembles, and their purpose is often to build upon what the bass provides to drive the harmony into darker or sweeter places. The relational correlate here is what I call the personal register: connections less visible than social forms, but more recognizable than the custodial interactions that happen more privately. These are the people that are easy to be around. The ones with whom you can lose yourself in each other, unguarded and unashamed. This is the register where the broadest sense of the word “friend” lives, encompassing any person you remain connected with when the press of custodial needs or the rules of social expectations fall away.
The three registers hold two functions within the context of interamory. First, they can describe your relationship with one person in the same way you might describe playing in the registers of any given instrument. Which registers are easy together, and which registers need more practice? Is each register felt and heard by both of you, or do some registers fit one listener better than they fit the other? Registers can also describe who is actively engaged in the different areas of your life by visualizing your people as a band or orchestra. Who carries the melody in your social register, co-creating the roles that help to drive and define us within our larger contexts? Are your custodial players able to help you keep a sense of the root progressions against clashing harmonies in your personal register? Does your song sound thin, strong in the upper and lower voices but lacking more colourful chords?
The next entry will help you to observe, describe, and name the unique, blended register profiles that emerge in real relationships.