A reference card. Beyond the major, minor, modal, pentatonic and symmetrical scales, there is a
long tail of named scales — from other traditions, from jazz, from Romantic and 20th-century
composers reaching for a particular colour. You don't drill these. Recognise the name, know
roughly the sound, move on.
The main ones you'll see named
Scale
Roughly
Sound
Where
Phrygian dominant (Freygish)
Phrygian with a major 3rd (♭2 ♮3)
Spanish, Middle-Eastern, klezmer
flamenco; klezmer; "Hava Nagila"
Harmonic major
major with a ♭6
major, but with a shadow
Romantic colour
Double harmonic (Byzantine / Arabic)
♭2, ♮3, ♭6, ♮7 — two augmented 2nds
very "exotic", ornate
Arabic maqām Hijaz-Kar; Turkish music
Hungarian / Gypsy minor
harmonic minor with a ♯4 as well
dark, dramatic, ornamental
Liszt; Roma music
Acoustic (Lydian dominant)
major with ♯4 and ♭7
bright but unresolved
jazz; Bartók; film
Bebop scales
a major/dominant scale with one chromatic passing note added (8 notes)
keeps the arpeggio landing on the beat
jazz improvisation
Neapolitan minor / major
minor with a ♭2
operatic, tragic
18th-c. Naples; Beethoven
Enigmatic
Verdi's invented scale — 1 ♭2 3 ♯4 ♯5 ♯6 7
deliberately strange
Verdi's Ave Maria
72 bpm
E PHRYGIAN DOMINANT — Phrygian, but with a major 3rd (G♯). The ♭2 right by the tonic (F) plus the augmented 2nd from ♭2 up to ♮3 (F to G♯) is the flamenco / klezmer sound. The same wide ♭2–♮3 step is also in the pitch material of some ragas and Arabic maqām — a step this course has met before, in harmonic minor.
From other traditions
Japanese pentatonics — Hirajoshi, In, Yo, Iwato: five-note scales, several with a
half step right next to the tonic, giving that spare, still, koto-and-shakuhachi sound. The
tune Sakura (in the practice bank) is one of these.
Indonesian gamelan — sléndro (roughly five near-equal steps) and pélog (seven
uneven steps): tuned by ear per ensemble, not to any Western standard.
The pitch material of Indian ragas — a raga isn't a scale (see A raga is not a scale),
but the notes it draws on can be laid out: raga Bhairav's material has a ♭2 and ♭6; Yaman's
is Lydian-flavoured (♯4); Todi's is very chromatic. Compare the pitch set, never equate
the raga to the scale.
The framing
There is no finite list of "all scales." A scale is just an agreed-on set of pitches with a
home — cultures and composers make new ones whenever they want a colour the existing ones
don't have. This course teaches the Western tonal spine in depth and gives you enough of a
map to recognise the rest.