Scale (music) scale is often used. In jazz, many different modes and scales are used, often within the same piece of music. Chromatic scales are common, especially in modern jazz. In Western music, scale notes are often separated by Equal temperament tones or semitones, creating 12 intervals per octave each separating two tones where the higher tone has a oscillation frequency of a fixed ratio (by a factor equal to the twelfth root of two, or approximately 1.059463) higher than the frequency of the lower one. A scale uses a subset consisting typically of 7 of these 12 as scale steps. Other
Scale (music) pitch classes they contain: Scales may also be described by their constituent intervals, such as being hemitonic, cohemitonic, or having imperfections. Many music theorists concur that the constituent intervals of a scale have a large role in the cognitive perception of its sonority, or tonal character. "The number of the notes that make up a scale as well as the quality of the intervals between successive notes of the scale help to give the music of a culture area its peculiar sound quality." "The pitch distances or intervals among the notes of a scale tell us more about the sound