CHROMATIC SCALE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Chromatic scale

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adjective

Chromatic adj.

Relating to color, or to colors.

(Mus.) Proceeding by the smaller intervals (half steps or semitones) of the scale, instead of the regular intervals of the diatonic scale. Note: The intermediate tones were formerly written and printed in colors.

Chromatic aberration. (Opt.) See Aberration, 4.

Chromatic printing, printing from type or blocks covered with inks of various colors.

Chromatic scale (Mus.), the scale consisting of thirteen tones, including the eight scale tones and the five intermediate tones.

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Etymology of 'Chromatic scale'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Chromatic scale" Quotes from Famous Books

... fundamentals, and correcting certain notes of the natural harmonic scale, as the seventh, eleventh, and thirteenth, which do not agree with our musical scale. Mr. W. Wyatt has recently taken out a patent for a double-slide trumpet, which possesses a complete chromatic scale. In the required length of slide the ear has always to assist. It is clear that the very short shifts of a double slide demand great nicety of manipulation. It is, of course, different with the valve trumpet. The natural trumpets are not limited to one or ...

— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... and the cushats, the wicked magpies and the screaming "jaypies," as the local people call the jays. Then, too, there are the birds down among the watercress and the brooklime in the clear pool below the spring, moorhens occasionally awakening the echoes by running down a weird chromatic scale or calling with their loud and mellow note to their friends and relations over at the brook; here, too, the softer croak of the mallard and the wild duck is also heard. A hawk, chasing some smaller bird, is darting and hovering over the tops of the ...

— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... Catalani's magnificent singing and acting gave it a heroic dignity. She lavished all the resources of her art on it. In one passage she dropped a double octave, and finally sealed her reputation "by running up and down the chromatic scale for the first time in the recollection of opera-goers.... It was then new, although it has since been repeated to satiety, and even noted down as an obbligato division by Rossini, Meyerbeer, and others. Rounds of applause rewarded this daring exhibition ...

— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris