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
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