These are scales that, because of the intervallic relationship among the tones (read scale degrees) within them, can be used to create interesting sounds and emulate some pretty interesting ethnic type of lines.
There's a huge list of possible scales so I'm not even gonna go there and I won't try to write a "Compound of all exotic scales that sound cool when applied to rock" kind of article. I just hope this will give you a few ideas on how to make your soloing a little bit more interesting or even just offer you a few more sound options. Ok here we go:
Let me first start by saying that you may already have some of the most popular exotic scales under your fingers, if you know the harmonic minor scale you'll get some wacky sounding scales from it's modes, let's have a look at those:
Harmonic Minor
Here's the PowerTab file of the above.
You can experiment with those and find out what sounds good to you and what works better, I personally like the 3rd 4th and 7th modes the best but, like with everything it's all a matter of taste.
The chord progressions you can take out of those modes are also quite interesting and you could easily go on for hours and hours about the harmonic ambiguity of some of those scales (for instance in the 6th mode you have an augmented 2nd <same as a minor third> AND a major 3rd , there's a whole ton of stuff you can do with that) so just take it easy and do like you would with any other improvisational resource, try it, experiment, keep what you like and forget what you don't..
Pentatonics
There's a huge amount of things you can do with pentatonic scales to get whatever sound you want… here's a suspended 4th mixolydian pentatonic, basically a mixolydian scale without a 3rd and a 6th it is a really versatile scale and because of its lacking of major/minor character it can be used successfully with minor or dominant chord progressions, you can also use it tactfully with major progressions to get a blues-beboppish-kinda-tone. It sounds very Chinese (to me anyways) and I heard someone dub it once "The Yin Yu Scale" so here it is the "Yin Yu Scale":
Here's the PowerTab file of the above.
Maybe that was a little bit too light for you. Right, so you want to really get into those oriental and Arabic sounds huh? Ok well try this one, the Korean Scale which is just a harmonic minor without the 3rd and the 6th again (so basically take the scale you just played and raise the 7th) Here it is.
Here's the PowerTab file of the above.
A new old approach
Those are only two of the thousands of possibilities out there, and I won't include all of them in this article, and even if I did there are very few of us that will sit down with all the possible examples and go through them one by one. So I'd rather show you how to come up with your own exotic sounding scales.
There's an old Chinese proverb that says "If you give a man a fish you have fed him once, but if you teach him how to fish you have fed him for the rest of his life". I have given you a couple of fish so far so let's see how we fish:
One of the best tools for composers and improvisers is to restrain themselves to just a few notes and rhythms (The article by Steve Vai where he talks about playing just one note for one hour is an extreme example of this approach), by limiting your options you're forcing yourself to be creative in order not to get bored to death… you may be thinking "what the heck does this have to do with the article??? I want more scales!!" but bear with me, we'll get there soon :D...
Ok, so how do we use this approach to come up with "new" exotic scales? Well first up take all scales you know and deliberately reduce them to 5 scale degrees; if you do that with the chromatic scale you'll come up with some wacky scales, and just like before, keep what you like and forget what you don't..
Check out this other scale it sounds Indian to me, it's a Phrygian scale without 5th (yeah this is a 6 tone scale) but harmonically it can also be interpreted as a Phrygian scale with no 6th and a raised 5th (F = E#).
Here's the PowerTab file of the above.
Don't forget to fiddle around with its different modes as well.
You can also get some interesting sounds out of the old diatonic scales, try raising (sharpening) or lowering (flatting) one or more of the scale degrees and you'll come up with some interesting stuff, take for instance the 3rd mode of the harmonic minor scale (Phrygian dominant Scale) and raise the 7th and you'll have a “double harmonic scale” also known as gypsy scale.
Check out this really weird scale I learned a long time ago (I think from one of the Marty Friedman's solo's or something), someone named it Bhairava (rather weird name if you ask me but so is the scale) It has a flat 2nd a, major 3rd perfect 4th dim 5th major 6th and a minor 7th It's very intriguing harmonically speaking; check it out:
Here's the PowerTab file of the above.
Make sure you experiment with the different modes of this scale as well.
Feel free to alter these scale patterns and come up with your own, use whatever feels the most natural and comfortable to you.
I hope you have enjoyed this first introduction to exotic scales; in the near future I am planning on writing some more follow up articles with some more practical information on how to apply these scales to musical situations.
Signing off for now,
Jorge Maldonado
Songwriter/Guitarist/Instructor