What is a Chromatic Scale?

You’ve all heard it and you’ve probably all played them, but in this lesson I’m going to describe everything you need to know about Chromatic Scales.

As we talked about in our other series on scales, they are really just a series of half steps and whole steps.

Half Steps are two keys together with no keys between.

Whole Steps are simply two keys together with one key between.

Always remember! Half steps and whole steps incorporate the black keys as well as the white keys.

A chromatic scale is built with all half steps – simply all the available notes with no notes in between; Technically, there can really only be 1 chromatic scale. You might start on a different note but it will always be the same series of notes.

So if you start on C it would be: C, C-sharp, D, D-sharp, E, F, F-sharp, G, G-sharp, A, A-sharp, B and C.

It covers all the keys in order without skipping or repeating any – all half steps, that’s it!

Next time we will cover the whole tone scale.

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729