Pierce, J.R. (1966). Attaining consonance in arbitrary scales. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 40, 249

A digital computer was used to synthesize a scale of tones with fundamentals 1/8 oct apart. Each tone had nonharmonic partials separated by 1/4 oct or multiples thereof. When sounded together, two tones separated by an even number of 1/8-oct intervals were more consonant than two tones separated by an odd number of 1/8-oct intervals. The scale synthesized is one example of many possible unconventional scales that can exhibit consonance and dissonance.

... By using a digital computer, musical tones with an arbitrary distribution of partials can be generated. Experience shows that, in accord with Plomp's and Levelt's experiments with pairs of sinusoidal tones, when no two successive partials are too close together such tones are consonant rather than dissonant, even though the partials are not harmonics of the fundamental. for such tones, the conditions for consonance of two tones will not in general be the traditional ratios of the frequencies of the fundamentals.

... When two tones of this scale separated by an even number of 1/8-oct intervals are played together, the partials either coincide or are separated by atleast 1/4 oct. When two tones separated by an odd number of 1/8-oct intervals are played together, at least two partials are separated by 1/8 oct only. Thus, we would expect that tones sounded together and separated by an even number of intervals would be more concordant than notes separated by an odd number of intervals; this is just what listeners report.