Chromatic harmonica Chromatic harmonica The chromatic harmonica is a type of harmonica that uses a button-activated sliding bar to redirect air from the hole in the mouthpiece to the selected reed-plate desired. When the button is not pressed, an altered diatonic major scale of the key of the harmonica is available, while depressing the button accesses the same scale a semitone higher in each hole. Thus, the instrument is capable of playing the 12 notes of the Western chromatic scale. The chromatic harmonica can thus be contrasted with a standard harmonica, which can play only the notes in a given musical key.
Hungarian minor scale indicates a half step, and + indicates an augmented second (the latter of which is enharmonically equivalent to a minor third but is notionally distinct). The scale contains two augmented seconds, one in each tetrachord. It also contains an augmented fourth (which is enharmonically identical to a tritone) between the first and fourth degree. Intriguingly, this scale (and its modes like the double harmonic scale) is the only seven-note subset of the equally tempered chromatic scale that is "perfectly balanced"; this means that when its pitches are represented as points in a circle (whose full circumference represents an octave), their