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.
Blues scale Blues scale The term blues scale refers to several different scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. The hexatonic, or six-note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the 5th degree of the original heptatonic scale. This added note can be spelled as either a 5 or a 4. \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \relative c' { </score> A major feature of the blues scale is the use of blue notes; however, since blue notes are considered alternative inflections, a blues scale may be considered to not fit the traditional definition of a scale. At its