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scale summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see scale.
Examples of the chromatic, major, and minor scales.
Examples of the chromatic, major, and minor scales.

scale, In music, primary pitches of a key or mode arranged within an octave. Scales are distinguished by the pattern of the intervals between adjacent notes. A scale can be seen as an abstraction from melody—that is, the pitches of a melody arranged in stepwise order.