Music Scales Chart – The Complete List

This complete list of Music Scales chart started as a thought experiment nearly 5 years ago. “How can we compile a complete list of music scales”

Simple enough question, but very difficult to find a single resource that provided the answer!

To resolve this we had to go back to the ancient math of Egyptians, BINARY. Focusing just on a 12 tone scale we can use a simple formula to determine the total amount of possibilities, then plot the results against what is known (or could be found).

The math is straight forward, we have 12 tones, each with 2 possible positions (on/off), which gives us 212  equaling =  4096 possibilities.

These resources are supplied in High Resolution Adobe PDF.

$9.00

Product Description

Half of this total (4096) can be omitted as they do not have 12 intervals, which leaves us with 2048 unique possibilities. A reasonable attempt has been made to identify and name the known, which has included each mode of any given scale. The result is (to date) that there are 136 named (identified) scales / modes, leaving  (2048-136) = 1912 unnamed scales.

Many of the Scales will not make much sense to our ear, but to our eye there are many diamonds “amongst  the rough” that can provide a platform for some new and very interesting sounds.

The supplied resources includes 2 documents, an Alphabetical listing of the identified scales and a Sequential list of all 2048 Scales. The Complete List of Music Scales displays each scale in an assumed flattened key (), though depending on the Key these could be either flattened () or sharpened ().

Available as Adobe PDF download. Two documents are provided. The complete list of Music Scales Chart in Sequentail order and the Alphabetical listing.

 Complete List of Music Scales Chart