Glossary
Chromatic Scale
Glossary
The twelve-tone chromatic scale is a set of pitches one twelfth of an octave apart that forms the basis of Western music. Played as a scale, the chromatic scale is fairly boring and flat sounding, but used for short stretches it can add flair to otherwise tonal pieces. Harmonious explains the chromatic scale’s inherent structure, starting at Pitch & Intervals.
Part of the twelve tone chromatic scale’s popularity is that it gives a reasonable balance between a discrete approximation to the continuous pitch space (think trombone, slide-whistle, violin or human voice) with a small-enough number of notes to allow simple-enough instrument manufacturing (if you consider the 88-key piano simple). Subsets of the 12-TET chromatic scale, the various scales, allow any instrument to play a broad range of music from many cultures and styles.
Atonal music treats the unordered notes of the twelve-tone chromatic scale as equals, resulting in compositions that for most listeners sound quite alien to traditional harmony. Tymoczko (2011) makes the case that a tonal, scalar approach underlies six centuries of Western musical composition, where composers explored the inherent structure of the chromatic scale and extended harmony beyond the diatonic, major-minor system, exhausting the chromatic scale’s underlying possibilities without abandoning the tonal possibilities of previous centuries. (See References.)
See also Twelve-tone Equal Temperament, the ubiquitous tuning system (for the last several centuries in Western music) to which most instruments are tuned.
The twelve-tone chromatic scale is a set of pitches one twelfth of an octave apart that forms the basis of Western music. Played as a scale, the chromatic scale is fairly boring and flat sounding, but used for short stretches it can add flair to otherwise tonal pieces. Harmonious explains the chromatic scale’s inherent structure, starting at Pitch & Intervals.
Part of the twelve tone chromatic scale’s popularity is that it gives a reasonable balance between a discrete approximation to the continuous pitch space (think trombone, slide-whistle, violin or human voice) with a small-enough number of notes to allow simple-enough instrument manufacturing (if you consider the 88-key piano simple). Subsets of the 12-TET chromatic scale, the various scales, allow any instrument to play a broad range of music from many cultures and styles.
Atonal music treats the unordered notes of the twelve-tone chromatic scale as equals, resulting in compositions that for most listeners sound quite alien to traditional harmony. Tymoczko (2011) makes the case that a tonal, scalar approach underlies six centuries of Western musical composition, where composers explored the inherent structure of the chromatic scale and extended harmony beyond the diatonic, major-minor system, exhausting the chromatic scale’s underlying possibilities without abandoning the tonal possibilities of previous centuries. (See References.)
See also Twelve-tone Equal Temperament, the ubiquitous tuning system (for the last several centuries in Western music) to which most instruments are tuned.