How To Create Sexy, Exotic Guitar Music With Exotic Guitar Scales, Chords, & Intervals
One of the things I’ve been getting into lately are these chillout mixes using Arabic, Spanish, and Indian melodies that you can listen to on YouTube.
Ever since I watched Temple Of Doom when I was little, I’ve been entranced by anything that hints at exotic locales like deserts, beaches, city nights, etc.
So when I started playing guitar it was natural that I would become interested in the exotic guitar scales section of the books that I bought. The only problem is that there were absolutely NO hints as to how to use them!
This is because the guitar instruction books do not have the goal of helping you create music of your own, but to play somebody else’s with the correct fingerings.
Well, that’s boring. You and I want the ability to create stuff out of thin air so………
Today I’m going to show you how to do that with three of the most exotic sounding scales you’ll find: the Spanish gypsy, the Hirajoshi, and the Hungarian Minor scales.
Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, the Beatle’s Indian influences, the soundtrack to Lawrence Of Arabia, Marty Friedman’s lead guitar style, Metal riffs, and even pop artists like Britney Spears and Madonna all use some form of exotic scales in their music.
And it’s very easy to pick out when you know that they don’t sound like or function the same way as major or minor scales do.
Major/Minor scales are used because of the amount of pretty chords they contain, and how easily vocalists could sing them.
Not that exotic scales are hard to sing. It’s just that many exotic scales like the ones you’re about to see contain intervals that aren’t as pleasant to an ear used to music produced in the western hemisphere.
This is important to consider because exotic scales require more care than usual when you choose to use them.
The minor pentatonic guitar scale, for instance, sounds cool no matter which way you use them, but the following exotic scales will be difficult to use unless you take the necessary preparations…….
Here’s 4 things to consider when using exotic scales:
The available minor or major harmony voicing’s available
Should the scale be used as a temporary melody going between sections, as a section itself, and/or a riff?
It’s exotic because of the wide intervals the scale is built upon.
What chords you can harmonize with each note in these scales
The most important thing to remember when you choose to play any scale is that you are making harmonies and melodies when using them.
You combine them with other notes to make chords, and add rhythms to them to make a melody.
Don’t worry though. I’ll show you some examples of how to do this.
The Harmonic Minor Scale
Harmonic minor is mostly known as the neoclassical minor scale favored by Yngwie Malmsteen, Michael Romeo, Marty Friedman, and others fond of the baroque period classical guitar sound.
However, as you can see in the Al Di Meola video down below, it’s a source of much more exotic sounds than you or I have probably imagined.
Many thanks to Always Guitar for taking the time to tab this out!
It’s no easy feat to break this down but I’ve taken the time to break down many of the chord shapes Al uses, and then find the key centers they come from.
You see, if you take the notes of a scale like A harmonic minor, you can create all sorts of chords different from those found in a major or minor key.
And many of these are dark and exotic sounding!
The theory is simple if you understand that all of these chords are coming from the scales I mention in the tab.
If you don’t understand this, then please consider looking at my music theory course.
Here’s two tricks that Al uses, and that the other guitarists I mentioned often use:
1) Playing the V and VI chord together, which in a harmonic minor scale will both be major chords. If you extend the chords, V becomes V7 and VI becomes VImaj7. This is the chord sound of so many spanish or latin guitar progressions.
2) Something Marty Friedman does a lot is superimpose diminished 7th chords onto a chord that’s played for several beats. Using the harmonic minor scale, you can use these sounds at the VI and VII, like Fdim7(F-Ab-B/Cb-D) and G#dim7 (G# – B – D – F) for instance in A harmonic minor.
The Spanish Gypsy Exotic Guitar Scale
A Spanish Gypsy = A – Bb – C# – D – E – F – G
The most difficult part of using exotic scales is building harmonies out of the rigid set of notes you see above. That’s another reason why major and minor scales are so popular since it comes ready made with a few major and minor chords to throw together.
Exotic scales are not used like a musical key is. This scale, the Spanish Gypsy, is used to express a single chord in a unique way, the A7:
A7 = A – C# – E – G
That’s 4 notes of the scale! That will function perfectly over A7, and the other three help give the exotic sound. Bb is a minor 2nd, D is a perfect 4th, and F is a minor 6th.
So the best thing to do is use this scale to accent this harmony or something similar to it, like F#m that contains the notes A and C# in the harmony.
Like I said, it’s hard to use this as a basis for a chord progression because of the Edim7, F aug, and C#dim7 chords that are diatonic to this scale.
But it’s easier to use this progression when playing the A Spanish Gypsy Scale:
A (5X765X) to Gm7 (3X3330) to Bb (6X876X)
No matter what exotic scale you use, go for basic major and minor chords.
The Hirajoshi Exotic Guitar Scale
My favorite guitarist, Marty Friedman, loves this one.
A Hirajoshi = A – B – C – E – F
This is nothing but a minor scale without the perfect 4th and minor 7th.
If you already know the minor scale patterns, just remove the 4th and 7th notes in the scale and you’ve got this Japanese flavored scale.
If you looked closely, you’ll see that this scale contains the 3 fundamental tones of A minor:
Am = A – C – E
The intervals between A and F, as well as B and F, are what make the scale sound so exotic.
Make use of these intervals in your playing and you’ll flesh out the nature of the scale.
This scale has the same problems of all exotic scales, except even worse.
The 5 notes available leaves even less room to create harmony.
I suggest using this scale in places where Am is a part of the musical key like D minor, C major, G major/E Minor, or basically any progression where an Am occurs and the exotic sound can fit in.
The Melodic Minor Scale & Modes
I only a few years ago learned how much melodic minor is used and how it’s known as the “jazz minor” scale.
It took me awhile, but it’s simply because it’s the source of a few scales and chord sounds that are more typically used in bebop and modern jazz sounds.
Now I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to Jazz guitar, as I’m mostly a rock guy. I do know enough to confidently say that this scale will give you sounds not only from this genre but also that can work in metal or pop.
Tosin Abasi has admitted to using some of these sounds himself!
So take a melodic minor scale like A melodic minor: A – B – C – D – E – F# – G#. It’s a minor scale with a raised 6th and 7th.
These two raised scale degrees give you a new set of chords to play with, which is also what harmonic minor does or any other scale.
Here’s some tricks:
1) Playing a melodic minor scale on the 5th degree, like you would in a diatonic mode, gives you the Mixolydian b6 scale. Basically, it makes the sound of a dominant 7th chord like E7, and adds an exotic jazz interval called the b6 or augmented 5th. This interval in the context of a dominant 7th chord is a sound used very often in Jazz! In A melodic minor, this is E7 (E-G#-B-D) and the b6 is C.
2) Do the same thing with the 4th scale degree, and you’ve got a scale called the Lydian Dominant and a chord sound we call the 7b5. In A melodic minor, this is D7b5 (D – F# – Ab/G# – C).
3) Finally, we got the maj7b5 created from the 3rd degree of the melodic minor scale. This gives you a maj7#5, which in A melodic minor is Cmaj7b5. You can also put a #5 on this harmony too.
There are many many sounds to explore in this scale if you add 9s, 11s, and 13s to some of these chords.
There’s also the Dorian b2 created from starting the scale on the 2nd scale degree, and the famous altered scale created from the 7th degree.
In my jazz guitar course, I go over how to understand the concept of polytonality and chord substitution, which this scale is a very rich source of.
The Hungarian Minor Exotic Guitar Scale
A Hungarian Minor = A – B – C – D# – E – F – G#
If you know your minor scales, this one is easy to remember too. Raise the 4th and 7th degrees a half step, and you’re done. Simple.
Here’s a chord progression I came up that uses the notes in this scale:
Am6 = 5X355X to Bm7b5 = 7X776 to G#m = 4X644X
There are some other things I didn’t mention in this article however:
Creating melodies
Building harmonies
Applying catchy rhythms
This is the other part of making music.
Without that knowledge, this is mostly useless although I’ve given several ways to use the previous exotic scales.
If you enjoyed this content, please click the image below to get 3 free intermediate courses on modes, target notes, and basic guitar music theory:
The Egyptian Scale
Hopefully you’re seeing a trend here that other educators and content creators haven’t highlighted with scales…..
It’s that the sound of the scale comes from the chords you create with it, and not just the solos and melodies possible from shredding it.
Take the next two scales as seen in these videos:
How To Make Music With The HUNGARIAN MINOR Scale (aka Double Harmonic Minor)
What chords can you create from them? What chord progressions can you make with these notes that you can’t make with another set of notes?
These are things to think about as you ponder these musical concepts.
The goal shouldn’t be to memorize as many scale patterns and chord shapes as you can.
The more I play, the more I’m trying to build a system of understanding the fretboard with sounds and ideas I haven’t yet integrated into my playing.
This way, when I need a sound that harmonic minor or hungarian minor, I can know what chord shapes and scale patterns I already have can help me get those sounds.
I know this is a theory heavy lesson. It’s not my goal to frustrate you or overly intellectualize the guitar.
I’m hoping this information will give you tools to make music with.
But if you’re struggling to understand these things, you probably need a good foundation of music theory knowledge and practice applying these concepts to the fretboard.
I can help you do both things with many of my courses in my store.
I hope you’ll check it out, or grab some of my free training!