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
Diatonic scale The pattern of elementary intervals forming the diatonic scale can be represented either by the letters T (Tone) and S (Semitone) respectively. With this abbreviation, major scale, for instance, can be represented as The major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales. It is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth that duplicates the first an octave higher. The pattern of seven intervals separating the eight notes is T–T–S–T–T–T–S. In solfege, the syllables used to name each degree of the scale are "Do–Re–Mi–Fa–Sol–La–Ti–Do". A sequence of successive natural notes starting from C is an example