The invention is an algorithmic method that can be used for the fundamental task of optimally spelling the pitches of any given musical scale. The method consists of generating all potential solutions containing all possible spellings for the pitch classes in a given input sequence (numbers of which represent any randomly compiled subset of the chromatic scale), and subjecting them to five filtering stages to find the correct solution. The invention can be used in spelling all possible scales that can be derived from the chromatic scale, in addition to conventional major and minor scales.