Octatonic scale out, the cascading arpeggios played on the celesta in the "Sugar Plum Fairy" from "The Nutcracker" ballet are made up of dominant seventh chords a minor third apart. "Hagens Watch", one of the darkest and most sinister scenes in Richard Wagner's opera "Götterdämmerung" features chromatic harmonies using eleven of the twelve chromatic notes, within which the eight notes of the octatonic scale may be found in bars 9–10 below:] The scale also may be found in the music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Melodic phrases that move by alternating tones and semitones frequently appear in the works of both
Diatonic and chromatic C: full octave ascending and descending A chromatic scale consists of an ascending or descending sequence of pitches, always proceeding by semitones. Such a sequence of pitches is produced, for example, by playing all the black and white keys of a piano in order. The structure of a chromatic scale is therefore uniform throughout—unlike major and minor scales, which have tones and semitones in particular arrangements (and an augmented second, in the harmonic minor). Some instruments, such as the violin, can be played in any scale; others, such as the glockenspiel, are restricted to the scale to which they are