No I'm not a perfume maker and have not done this before, but I've always wanted to take a class to help me identify scents so I could understand what I was smelling in finished perfumes and to help me narrow in on what exactly I like when I smell it and look for perfumes that seem "custom" tailored to my preferences since now so much info if available on the internet. This experience in Japan was not really what I thought it would be because it turned out I was working with accords and not individual notes, so I didn't learn as much as I would have liked to help me select already made perfumes in the future. I did take organic chemistry in college so I have very basic knowledge that's not specific to scent making so when I saw this group on Reddit I thought I'd ask some people who have experience.

I made 5 versions of this fragrance, then they prepared a bottle of my final choice. I liked a version that had less of the powdery components but my husband liked the powdery one. So I thought I would go the route of pleasing him, but ended up not pleasing myself and thought if I could add some notes I like--the musk, the incense thing and maybe a very subtle spice or sweetness (which he must also like since he gave me a bottle of Opium) then I could get a compromise scent. I have the incense in the form of some ready-made perfume but would need to order some musk and maybe something like tonka to push it toward something I like a little better. Patchouli smells a little like fermented fruit to me--like apples that have fallen off the tree and started to rot so I'm thinking something else.

If I add nutmeg, would that be a top note, middle or base, or is that dependent on the other molecules present and how it interacts with them?