Arthur B.

I recently discovered, via a popular YouTube video, a lovely mathematical model of dissonance (the Plomp-Levelt Sethares), which convincingly makes the case that dissonance is as much a function of timbre as of relative pitch. Most timbres produce dissonance curves with minima around the just intonation intervals, but I wondered: could we introduce a small amount of inharmonicity in a timbre to have all TET-12 tones fall exactly on minima? Surprisingly, yes! The following is produced with a sawtooth wave. Pictured is the dissonance curve along with the slight inharmonic adjustments.