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What is the musical chromatic scale

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What is the musical chromatic scale

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Although art is an emotional and creative activity, we must be aware that it is also a discipline that requires knowledge and conscious decision-making to be able to authentically express an idea or a feeling. This means that in order to call ourselves artists we must understand the rules and the communication system.

Music has a wide panorama of phenomena and factors with which we can play to create and express ourselves, they are all these tools those that allow us to vary and do such different things despite the fact that we are always talking about building works with the principle of sound. Between notes, chords, instruments and many more elements, we have the scales. The scales are a fundamental principle of music, so this time we will talk about one of them. In this lesson from a TEACHER we will learn what is the musical chromatic scale.

The scale refers to a series of steps or steps. In music, those steps are musical notes. When we place a series of notes of different pitch that rise or fall in an organized way and with determined distances between one and the other, we are forming a scale; It is also important that you know that there are different

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types of musical scales.

To understand and be able to perform musical scales we must first understand the fundamental concept of the musical intervalThe interval is the distance between one note and another. In order to measure this we use a musical unit that we call "tone". The piano is very useful to be able to visualize the distances between the notes, so if you can get closer to one to understand it, it will be of great help.

Look at the keys, each one is a different note. You should know that there is a full tone between one note and another when there is a key in between. For example, we can see that between C and D there is a black key, so its distance is 1 full tone. On the other hand we have the "semitone", which, as its name implies, is half a tone. If you look at the piano again, between the keys of the notes mi and fa you will see that there are no keys in between, so their distance is 1 semitone.

Once you understand the concepts of tone and semitone, you can analyze and build different scales.

If you want to know what the musical chromatic scale is, you have to take into account that its key unit of measurement is the semitone. As we mentioned before, there are many musical scales and each one has a different construction depending on the distances between one note and another. The chromatic scale has the unique characteristic of having a semitone distance between all notes. It is called chromatic because it has all the possible colors (different sounds) that we use in Western music.

The basic notes of the major scale are constituted by 7 noteswhich are Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Si, ending in the eighth which is C again. In the chromatic scale, if we add all the semitones, instead of 7 notes we get 12, and the scale would be the following:

Do, Do #, Re, Re #, Mi, Fa, Fa #, Sol, Sol #, A, A # and Si, ending in C octave.

Another important point is to remember that a scale can also be descending (from high to low). In this case the chromatic scale would be the following: Do, Si, Bb, A, Lab, Sol, Solb, Fa, Mi, Eb, Re, Reb and Do.

What is the musical chromatic scale - The musical chromatic scale: definition

Image: Musiclave

Another thing that you may have noticed is that for the ascending chromatic scale we use sharps (#) and for the descending chromatic scale we use flats (b), We call these signs alterations and they serve to refer to a note that has been altered half a tone. Both alterations are correct and can be used indifferently in the scales regardless of whether they are ascendant or descendant, but we do it this way because it is more practical.

Finally you should know that as in any other, scale can start on any note (not necessarily in C). To play the chromatic scale on the piano, all you have to do is start at a key and play each of them until you reach the same key you started on, but one octave higher or under.

The chromatic scale may have a strange sound at first since we are not used to hearing it as much as others scales (for example the major scale and the minor scale), but this can be very useful and interesting in musical circumstances determined. One of the musical genres that takes advantage of the chromatic scale is blues and jazzas it allows you to make passing notes to make melodic and harmonic connections.

Now that you have learned a new scale, you can go to the piano or instrument of your choice and play it to become familiar with it. Although it is not as common as other scales, it is still a tool that you can use to continue creating music.

What is the musical chromatic scale - Alterations in the musical chromatic scale

Image: Youtube

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