The 12 Notes
Western music is built on 12 distinct pitches that repeat in a cycle. These notes — C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B — form the complete alphabet of music.
The Chromatic Scale
Every melody, chord, and harmony in Western music is built from just 12 notes. These 12 pitches are called the chromatic scale, and they repeat in a continuous cycle — after B, the sequence starts over at C, just one octave higher.
On a piano, these 12 notes include all the white and black keys within one octave. On a guitar, they are the 12 frets from open to the 12th fret on any string. The distance between any two adjacent notes is called a semitone (or half step) — the smallest step in standard Western music.
Sharps and Flats
Five of the 12 notes have two names. C# ("C sharp") and Db ("D flat") are the exact same pitch — just spelled differently depending on musical context. These dual-name notes are called enharmonic equivalents. ChordColor lets you toggle between sharp and flat naming with the enharmonic lock control.
In ChordColor
When you select a root note, ChordColor uses these 12 pitches to calculate every interval. The root is always red, and every other note gets its color based on its distance (in semitones) from the root.