- published: 27 Dec 2014
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Diatonic (Greek: διατονική) and chromatic (Greek: χρωματική) are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900.
These terms may mean different things in different contexts. Very often, diatonic refers to musical elements derived from the modes and transpositions of the "white note scale" C–D–E–F–G–A–B (see details below). In some usages it includes all forms of heptatonic scale that are in common use in Western music (the major, and all forms of the minor).Chromatic refers to structures derived from the chromatic scale, which consists of all semitones.
In ancient Greece there were three standard tunings (known by the Latin word genus, plural genera) of a lyre. These three tunings were called diatonic,chromatic, and enharmonic, and the sequences of four notes that they produced were called tetrachords ("four strings"). A diatonic tetrachord comprised, in descending order, two whole tones and a semitone, such as A G F E (roughly). In the chromatic tetrachord the second string of the lyre was lowered from G to G♭, so that the two lower intervals in the tetrachord were semitones, making the pitches A G♭ F E. In the enharmonic tetrachord the tuning had two quarter tone intervals at the bottom: A G F♭ E (where F♭ is F♮ lowered by a quarter tone). For all three tetrachords, only the middle two strings varied in their pitch.
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