Can you create your own scales?

[Filip Tomiša]

I’ve been playing around with my guitar and I chose 7 different notes to create a scale. I played around with those 7 notes and I came up with some riffs that I really like and they sound “new” to me and very different from everything else I’ve been listening to. So my question is, is that really a scale or is it just 7 random notes. Does there have to be some kind of a rule so it’s actually considered a scale? I know that a scale should have 7 different letters ( example: C major scale ( C,D,E,F,G,A,B ) but in my case it doesn’t. Even if i make it a sharp or a flat scale it still doesn’t have 7 different letters.

 

[idssdi]

There are a lot of different scales you have pentatonic, sixtatonic (im not good in greek but it is the blues scale), septatonic and octatonic (dominished scale is an example in think) there even a chromatic scale. I think a scale is a series of notes that is not a melody or anything arpeggio or anything even Syn saide in an interview he makes up his own scales sometimes. Personally I always make up scales by checken the notes in thet chords im using and make a scale out of these notes (usually an existing scale)
Could you show the scale you can up with because im interested and I really like exotic scales (even though im not always sure how to use them)

 

[Christopher Lonski]

Post the riffs and we can analyze them! The technical definition of a scale is “any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale.” Its more important to think of things harmonically, like what chord or chords do the notes fit over? But yeah, post a video if you can!

 

[Filip Tomiša]

Oh I see.
The scale goes like this: A C# D D# E F# G#
I just googled to see if that scale exist and I realised that it’s almost identical to E major scale except B is changed with D. I even considered B as a “bonus note” because it sounded right. I guess it’s in our nature to somehow figure out what notes go together because I had no idea what notes were in E major scale and I chose almost every note from that scale except D.
I’ll upload a video tommorow. Would love to hear what you guys think. And be honest

 

[Christopher Lonski]

I dont know if there is necessarily a name for this scale but its more of less A Major that also has the #4 or lydian note. You could totally throw that B back in there and it would work the same way. Post your riff and we can get a better idea how you’re using it!

 

[D K]

I entered those notes in a guitar scale identifier and it didn’t recognise it as a scale. But there’s quite a big gap between the A and C# so I added a B and it says this is the D# jewish (magen abot) scale.
I think it’s unlikely that you will come up with a scale that no one has used yet, since there are only 12 different notes and possibilities are thus limited. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to come up with “new” scales, it’s better to figure out things on your own rather than to blindly copy them from the internet.

 

[Julian Barton]

What the heck is a sixatonic? Lmao Bing yields no results.

 

[D K]

He probably meant hexatonic, a scale with 6 notes per octave.

 

[idssdi]

Yes i did mean that just didnt know how to call it in greek (at least i think it is greek)

 

[Brian Haner Sr.]

I think you made up a scale! I couldn’t identify it. However – I couldn’t help but laugh. The notes in your scale are the ending to every jazz song played by bad wedding bands.

 

[Filip Tomiša]

Oh no! I hope that’s not the universe telling me I’ll end up in a bad jazz wedding band!!
Anyway here are the two riffs I wrote, tell me what you think. https://syngates.com/riffs/riffs-i-wrote-using-a-scale-i-created/