All the scales, yes, all 4,095 of them

carlos · January 2023

Only for the extremely nerdy, but I just spent 3 hours with a guitar on my lap and a smile on my face browsing this website. I don't even know what 90% of this stuff means (enantiomorph anyone?), but I know my intervals and how to play through a bracelet diagram.
https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/finder.php

In my case I was looking for minor scales, which in my mind is anything with a minor triad starting at the root, and without a major 3rd. Why? Because if you stack all the commonly used minor scales/modes on each other, that's pretty much what you end up with. Want a b2, sure, Phrygian has that. Want a b5 while keeping the 5 as well since that's in the aforementioned minor tirad? Sure, the blues scale has that so you can use it. And so on, except for the major 3rd*.
Now, it'd be very boring to play 11 tone scales, so this is where the scale finder above comes in. And I've been having fun trying out the hundreds of possible scales and little variations.

For example, I found this eight tone symmetrical scale with 2 minor triads, 2 major triads, and 4 dim triads called a Van der Horst Octatonic. Did a little chord progression for it, plugged it into my looper and had so much fun inventing melodies with it. I feel this website and me will be friends for a long time.

*- I'm sure there are minor scales with a major 3rd in them, but they're not what I was looking for.