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diatonic
Sign in to saveAlso known as diatonic scale
organized in tones and tonality, opossed to chromatic
Wikidata facts
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- scale
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- Diatonic scales
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Encyclopedic overview
In music theory, a diatonic scale is a heptatonic (seven-note) scale that includes five whole steps (whole tones) and two half steps (semitones) in each octave, in which the two half steps are separated from each other by either two or three whole steps. In other words, the half steps are maximally separated from each other.
The seven pitches of any diatonic scale can also be obtained by using a chain of six perfect fifths. For instance, the seven natural pitch classes that form the C-major scale can be obtained from a stack of perfect fifths starting from F:
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “diatonic” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.