Despite the recent advances in the theory of exponential Riesz bases, it is yet unknown whether there exists a set S ⊂ R d which does not admit a Riesz spectrum, meaning that for every Λ ⊂ R d the set of exponentials e 2πiλ•x with λ ∈ Λ is not a Riesz basis for L 2 (S). As a meaningful step towards finding such a set, we construct a set S ⊂ [− 1 2 , 1 2 ] which does not admit a Riesz spectrum containing a nonempty periodic set with period belonging in αQ + for any fixed constant α > 0, where Q + denotes the set of all positive rational numbers. In fact, we prove a slightly more general statement that the set S does not admit a Riesz spectrum containing arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions with a fixed common difference belonging in αN. Moreover, we show that given any countable family of separated sets Λ 1 , Λ 2 , . . . ⊂ R with positive upper Beurling density, one can construct a set S ⊂ [− 1 2 , 1 2 ] which does not admit the sets Λ 1 , Λ 2 , . . . as Riesz spectrum. An interesting consequence of our results is the following statement. There is a set V ⊂ [− 1 2 , 1 2 ] with arbitrarily small Lebesgue measure such that for any N ∈ N and any proper subset I of {0, . . . , N − 1}, the set of exponentials e 2πikx with k ∈ ∪ n∈I (N Z+n) is not a frame for L 2 (V ). The results are based on the proof technique of Olevskii and Ulanovskii in 2008.