Shí-èr-lǜ Shí-èr-lǜ Shí-èr-lǜ (, , "12 pitches") (twelve-pitch scale) was a standardized gamut of twelve notes. Also known, rather misleadingly, as the Chinese chromatic scale, it was one kind of chromatic scale used in ancient Chinese music. The Chinese scale uses the same intervals as the Pythagorean scale, based on 2:3 ratios (8:9, 16:27, 64:81, etc.). The gamut or its subsets were used for tuning and are preserved in bells and pipes. Unlike the Western chromatic scale, the shí-èr-lǜ was not used as a scale in its own right; it is rather a set of fundamental notes on which other scales
Jazz scale scales add a single chromatic passing tone to the 7 note major scale (Ionian and Mixolydian modes). The added passing tone creates an 8 tone scale that fits rhythmically evenly within a 4/4 measure of eight 8th notes, thus making it useful in practicing. When an 8th note bebop scale run starts on the beat from a chord tone (Root, 3rd, 5th or 7th) the other chord notes will also fall on the beats. As a result, all of the "non-chord tones" will fall on the upbeats (the "ands" when counting "one and two and three and four and") and