My students often ask me to explain the difference between chromaticism and alteration. Chromaticism refers to the expansion of the diatonic scale as a foundation through the semitone modification (“colorization”) of its primary degrees.
Alteration, on the other hand, is a specific form of intra-modal chromaticism. It involves a semitone change in the unstable diatonic degrees (2nd, 4th, 6th, and 7th) of a mode, intensifying their gravitation toward the stable degrees (1st, 3rd, and 5th).
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