Question:
Heartfelt thanks to all of you from a relative newby! I've learned so much by eavesdropping here. I'm starting my first thread (gulp) to ask for advice about sorting out the notes in frags. How did others here get access to individual oils and extracts, etc? I've done some smearing and sniffing in organic food co-ops and so forth but this will only get you so far. A small selection of EO's won't help with synthetics or with accords, which can be so subtley intertwined that it's really hard to tell what the individual notes are.
(Had a recent experience mixing my own frag at an aromatherapy shop with a pretty wide selection of stuff, which was very helpful and fun. It opened my eyes (nose?) to the differences between, say, vetivers and sandalwoods from different sources: what huge complexity! The actual juice is not great, quite heady and dominated by monster jasmine notes. The vetiver, sandalwood, and moss underneath aren't making much of an appearance yet. Although it is starting to calm down after a couple weeks sitting in its vial of alcohol.)
So, those of you who are able to name notes with such wonderful specificity: how on earth did you get your educations?

Answer:
One of my best places to learn notes is in the kitchen. If you have a well-stocked spice rack, start there. I already liked to cook when I started here, so I was golden. As for other notes, just take opportunities as they come. When I'm in home depot, i'll sometimes discreetly smell the cedar racks...etc.
Also, there are many "one note" fragrances that are designed to display only a certain note. Usually if you type in the name of the note in the title of the fragrance prompt in the directory seach engine, you'll get a list of niche frags that revolve around that note. You'll figure out which are the most accurate representations by reading the reviews. Try Tam Dao by Diptyque for a sandalwood demonstration (it wouldn't come up in a "sandalwood" title search, so i'll tell you here). Or search the name of the note in the community search. There are threads devoted to most of the "main" notes that will have many reccommendations. Then order samples!!
Good luck!

Answer:
Thanks, LiveJazz! It hadn't occured to me to just go smell lumber and spices. It's a great idea! Do you have excuses ready for when the manager and two guys from security approach you moving fast? I've gone into one small boutique four or five times and it seems like the SA thinks I'm weird to be spraying several frags at a time up and down my arms. And I haven't even started smelling the carpet or the chairs yet.
It's true that what I need is not necessarily access to all the chemicals in frags, but also just some help with my tiny vocabulary to describe smells generally. And it seems like if I can't name a smell somehow it doesn't stick in my memory, or at least not in conscious memory. I'll also do some more homework looking for threads devoted to particular notes.
If it's not too much to ask, it would be really interesting to hear stories about how people got into fragrances and started to learn. It's easy to feel like everyone here sort dropped from the skies fully formed or something. Not that I'm not enjoying my ignorance. It's quite wonderful at midlife to have something very new to sit with, wonder about.

Answer:
go to a whole foods/natural foods type store. there are usually essential oils for sale and you can smell the testers. you'll be able to tick off many notes there.

Answer:
One way to learn would be to memorize the scent pyramid for what you wear and wear it exclusively till you can identify each note.
Perfumers are called "noses" when they can identify the components in a specified amount of time. The number one nose is expected to rattle them off blindfolded either he or the bottle is not identified before the droplets hit the floor. I can do it with citrus so far if it's orange.
Buy a nice ceder chest. No moths or other bugs like it and there are thousands of hungry woodworkers out there.

Answer:
Originally Posted by Strollyourlobster It's easy to feel like everyone here sort dropped from the skies fully formed or something. Surely nobody here did. But when I started about one and a half year ago I had the same impression. In the meantime I make it to recognize most of the main notes (lavender, patchouli, sandalwood, etc.) pretty well but to be honest a lot of the creations I have tested got the notes perfectly blended in a way that makes it definitely very complex to pick out the single notes. Even worse if e.g. aldehydes come into play.
Unfortunately I am more of an excursive person and so I didnt make it yet to consecrate myself to systematic lessons in testing essential oils but if I read the notes pyramid of a fougere I know its a fougere and I have an idea of it and what to approximately expect. Some people here on the board have doubtlessly this great ability but surely not everyone talking about "the sublime use of note X in a frag Y" knows really what he is talking about. Reading the reviews confirm that suspicion. Nevermind, after a certain time you will find out which member "speaks your language".....
In the end its absolutely helpfull to know the notes to be able to describe fragrances but I know a couple of reviewers here on the board which have the talent to describe frags in a more impessionistic (but sometimes very "precise") way without refering to the notes. Thats great too and I love it....
Nice wardrobe btw!
Christian

Answer:
Yeah, costello, I really like good qualitative descriptions, too. Robyogi, I think, once said that a frag "puts him in the mood to think," which set me wondering what kinds of fragrances and situations help me think. A number of reviews here have opened up associations that I wouldn't have gotten to on my own. Warm and cool, introverted and extroverted, night and day, winter and summer, masculine and feminine, etc. All of these cues are gradually giving more dimension to my olifactory map, although its still pretty crude.
And I like what Fredricktoo says about the value of spending a lot of time with a particular frag until the layers become clear. Although it is kind of frustrating to smell something repeatedly, over hours and days, and just come away with hmmm....smells like Eau d'Hermes....hhhhmmmm, some citrus of some kind and jasmine and cumin annnndmmmm...Eau d'Hermes. The olfactory imagination, in my case anyway, is so impressionable that whatever occurs to me can take shape in the frag: oily rags, I'll think, and baby powder, and something crotchish. But any of this may have more to do with my run-of-the-mill infantile fantasies and less to do with the Eau d'Hermes my nose is currently stuck into. Ahhh, revealing a bit too much, maybe.

Answer:
I've visited the places that have the essential oils.....You can learn different notes this way.......Gary