in music, why does a chromatic scale have 12 notes?

Answer 1

cause it doesnt have 14 lol

Answer 2

It comes from classical tradition. Western musical scales started with the Greeks and was refined during the Middle Ages and Renaissance into the scales we know today. The chromatic scale is the base scale from which all other scales (major, minor, etc.) come from.

Composers didn't start really using the chromatic scale in composition until the Romantic period in the 19th century. In the 20th century, compositions became increasingly chromatic with less emphasis on the other scales. Jazz music often uses the chromatic scale.

Answer 3

Technically it doesn't have twelve notes. It has every note, but there are twelve notes in an octave: C-C#-D-D#-E-F-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B. On a four-octave instrument it would have 48 notes.

Scales are sometimes denoted by the number of notes per octave: An octatonic scale has eight notes per octave and a pentatonic has five notes per octave. Since a chromatic scale has every note in an octave, it has twelve notes.

Answer 4

It's based on a tempered scale.