Spelling triads from harmonic series - finding new sonority

As a succession of the previous article of C. Vivier harmonized his melody by harmonic series, I was inspired and tried to do something similar, treating the harmonic series as a  scale and building triads.

The example below is a harmonic series on B-flat. I picked part of the series in the red box as an 8-note scale. (the digit on the notes show how many cents deviate from the equal temperament)

A harmonic series on B-flat
(the series is infinite, only the first 16 partials have shown)

Now we stack chords with thirds, every 2 steps on the harmonic series scale (red box). The result is below.

chords from the harmonic series

I would like to borrow the idea of traditional functional harmony, the tonic, dominant and subdominant function, in order to give myself guidance on using these chords. Then, I rated the quality of the chords, 1 for the purest and 5 for the harshest. I did it by ear so it is subjective. (This is art.)

Back to our traditional functional harmony. It is all about tension and relation. The tonic function has stability, contrary to the dominant function. The rating of the quality echoes a similar concept. When the harshest chord (5) back to the purest chord (1), we all have the relief effectively.

For the harmonic progression rules, I also borrowed the traditional practice.
  • 1 can go anywhere
  • 5 has to go back to 1
  • in the no. of 2, 3, 4 the numbers only go up
This is spicy!!

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