Chromatic scale Chromatic scale The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone above or below its adjacent pitches. As a result, in 12-tone equal temperament (the most common temperament in Western music), the chromatic scale covers all 12 of the available pitches. Thus, there is only one chromatic scale. Moreover, in equal temperament, all the semitones have the same size (100 cents). As a result, the notes of an equal-tempered chromatic scale are equally-spaced. This makes the chromatic scale a nondiatonic scale with no tonic because of the symmetry of its equally-spaced notes. The ascending and descending
Scale (music) pitch classes they contain: Scales may also be described by their constituent intervals, such as being hemitonic, cohemitonic, or having imperfections. Many music theorists concur that the constituent intervals of a scale have a large role in the cognitive perception of its sonority, or tonal character. "The number of the notes that make up a scale as well as the quality of the intervals between successive notes of the scale help to give the music of a culture area its peculiar sound quality." "The pitch distances or intervals among the notes of a scale tell us more about the sound