Scale (music) scale is often used. In jazz, many different modes and scales are used, often within the same piece of music. Chromatic scales are common, especially in modern jazz. In Western music, scale notes are often separated by Equal temperament tones or semitones, creating 12 intervals per octave each separating two tones where the higher tone has a oscillation frequency of a fixed ratio (by a factor equal to the twelfth root of two, or approximately 1.059463) higher than the frequency of the lower one. A scale uses a subset consisting typically of 7 of these 12 as scale steps. Other
Scale (music) of each scale step provides a method to classify scales. For instance, in a chromatic scale each scale step represents a semitone interval, while a major scale is defined by the interval pattern T–T–S–T–T–T–S, where T stands for whole tone (an interval spanning two semitones), and S stands for semitone. Based on their interval patterns, scales are put into categories including diatonic, chromatic, major, minor, and others. A specific scale is defined by its characteristic interval pattern and by a special note, known as its first degree (or tonic). The tonic of a scale is the note selected as the