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
Transposition (music) Thus the set ("A") consisting of 0–1–2 transposed by 5 semitones is 5–6–7 (T("A")) since , , and . There are two different kinds of transposition, depending on whether one is measuring intervals according to the chromatic scale or some other scale. In chromatic transposition one shifts every pitch in a collection of notes by a fixed number of semitones. For instance, if one transposes the pitches C–E–G upwards by four semitones, one obtains the pitches E–G–B. In scalar transposition one shifts every pitch in a collection by a fixed number of scale steps relative to some scale. For example,