Attaining Consonance in Arbitrary Scales
John R. Pierce · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1966
A digital computer was used to synthesize a scale of tones with fundamentals 18 oct apart; each tone had nonharmonic partials separated by 18 oct or multiples thereof. When sounded together, two tones separated by an even number of 18-oct intervals were more consonant than two tones separated by an odd number of 18-oct intervals. The scale synthesized is one example of many possible unconventional scales that can exhibit consonance and dissonance.