scale (music)

In music, a progression of single notes upwards or downwards in ‘steps’ (scale originally meant ‘ladder’). For example, the most common scale is that of C major, which can be found by playing all the white notes on the keyboard from any C to the next C above or below. A scale is defined by its starting note and may be major or minor depending on its arrangement of tones and semitones. A chromatic scale is made up entirely of semitones. It includes all the notes (black and white) on the keyboard and has no key because there is no fixed starting point.

A whole-tone scale is a six-note scale and is also indeterminate in key. This scale originated in the South Sea Islands and was used extensively by Claude Debussy. A diatonic scale has seven notes, a pentatonic scale has five.