9-limit JI -- playing with fire again

I was paper-noodling the other day, and came up with what to
me looks like a useable scheme for dealing with, if you will,
9 limit JI. Keep in mind that I'm still learning this stuff
so "usable" for me may mean "trivial" for some of you. ;-)

What I came up with -- and it's hardly earth shattering being
right out of Partch's diamonds -- were two tone clusters:

Utonality: 7/9 - 1/1 - 7/6 - 7/5 - 7/4
Otonality: 1/1 - 5/4 - 3/2 - 7/4 - 9/4

What stuck out, and I was inspired to look at it this way both by
something Paul Erlich wrote, and by seeing the changes in the
Helmholtz consonance graph under the influence of multiple drones
seperated by 3/2s, is that there are two tones which seem to be
structurally significant. For lack of better terms, I'm referring to
them as "root" and "axis". The "root" is the 1/1 in the Partchian
sense, and the axis is a tone that has a 3/2 above and below. In the
Utonal, the root is 1/1 and the axis is 7/6, where in the Otonal the
root is 1/1 and the axis is 3/2.

As an isolated interval, I've for some time preferred the 7/6 to the
6/5 to give a "minor" feel, so this is intriguing to me. I started to
play around with permutations, exchanging root and axis and such, and
on paper it looks like there might something to work with here. It
also looks like one could think of it as a pair of 4:5:6 and 6:7:9
chords, or their utonal counterparts. [Polytonality?]

I don't have any polyphonic instruments set up in JI at the moment,
though I'm hoping to put some rough 22tet stuff (so I can practice
other parts and refine it) to tape over the holidays, after which I'll
probably be more motivated to retune my synth (retuning it is a pain).
In the meantime, I tried the utonal chord on my 22tet guitar, playing
it "stick style", and found it to be quite pleasing, even in its
tempered form, though I haven't try doing anything with it yet (it was
getting late :)

Comments? Advice?

Thanks,

Steve


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