>  Hi Margo~
>  Sorry for the delay on this.

Dear Kraig,

Please forgive me for not responding on your great response to an
experiment on consonance I posted some time ago:

    <http://www.bestII.com/~mschulter/ji01.mp3>

>  I don't think i have ever heard such sounds coming from you
>  band it seems to hold some quite subtle surprises in the
>  progressions. It sits quite nicely on some of the intermediate
>  chords between "consonances" or 'dissonances ' which why i
>  assumed you provided us with this. The effect that some of
>  them can be either cadences to my ear or they could resolve
>  more. I am quite capable of accepting either ways of
>  moving. It gives the progression an interesting suspense and
>  unexpectedness. I am sorry if words fail me a bit here.  On

Thank you for nicely summing up what my intent was, based on the
discussion with you, Cris, Steven, and others. And your
suggestion about "either cadences to my ear or they could resolve
more" led me to try something new, and I agree!

Actually words fail me a bit, too, because the musical experience
is much greater. But I'll try to tell the story of this piece,
which I'd like to expand, and apologize for the limitations of
the verbal medium. The mp3 file is really better documentation.

What happened is that I was mostly focusing on composing a piece
in a 5-limit Renaissance JI tuning, something I'm now getting
ready to record, but was led by the consonance/dissonance
discussion to try an experiment.

I found myself playing these chords on the lower manual of my
15-note tuning after Zarlino, and I'll also post this as an HTML
link to address any formatting problems. Remember that I was
feeling out the keys rather than calculating exact ratios,
although it might be helpful if I show what those ratios were:

    C# 25/12    D 20/9    C# 25/12
    Bb 16/9     B 15/8    Bb 16/9
    F# 25/18    F  4/3    F# 25/18
    Eb  6/5     D 10/9    Eb  6/5

In this context, Eb-F#-Bb-C# sounded like a stable resolution,
maybe by some curious Classic association because of the tritone
tension in the middle chord. Then I came upon an embellishment
for this middle chord in the progression, with the tritone
4/3-15/8 sustained in the two middle voices while the outer parts
move C#-D and Eb-D around this tritone:

    C# 25/12    Eb 25/12  D 20/9    C# 25/12
    Bb 16/9     B 15/8              Bb 16/9
    F# 25/18    F  4/3              F# 25/18
    Eb  6/5     C# 25/24  D 10/9    Eb  6/5

Another figure I found, rather gentle, was this:

    C# 25/12  Eb 12/5   C# 25/12 
    Bb 16/9
    F# 25/18
    Eb  6/5   C# 25/24  Eb  6/5

This is a sort of oscillation of the outer voices around the
stationary middle ones, with Eb-C# or C#-Eb at 144/125 or 244.969
cents.

The humorous part about all this is that I had chosen the tuning
in order mainly to compose a piece in the style of around 1600,
and show off all of those pure 5-limit concords. But it's amazing
what resources a tuning may include that weren't so predictable!

Again, as you put it so well, words fail me also here.

Peace and love,

Margo