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The Chromatic Scale: Using Flat and Sharp Notes to Fill In the Gaps
The chromatic scale by itself sounds chaotic. Not at all musical.
However, that does not mean the chromatic scale has no musical value. As you’ll see shortly, the 12-equal-interval scale, the chromatic scale, serves a valuable purpose as a pool of tones you can dip into and use in the construction of many different, truly musical scales. You can also use the same 12-equal-interval scale as a pool you can dip into for colourful extra notes when writing a song.
(While most equal-interval scales are inherently chaotic and unmusical, a few are actually palatable. Chapter 5 discusses an example of a musical-sounding equal-interval scale—an exception to the rule.)
For now, go ahead and fill in the five wide gaps in the above scale (Figure 13) with five new notes.
But before you do that, you’ll need names for the new notes. Problem is, there’s no letter of the alphabet between C and D, or D and E, or F and G, etc. What to do?
- Suppose you start at C, you’re going up to D, and you want to stick a note in between. Since you’re going “up” in pitch, call the in-between note a sharp note (symbolized ♯).
- If you’re going “down” in pitch, from D down to C, call the same in-between note a flat note (symbolized ♭).
(This nomenclature will become a lot clearer shortly.)
So ... here’s what you get when you fill in the last five gaps of the “do-re-mi” scale (Figure 14):
FIGURE 14: The “Do-Re-Mi” Scale with the Gaps Filled In with Flat and Sharp Notes