Orchestral Voicings Part 6: A Closer Look at Intervallic Constructions

In the previous parts of this ongoing series I was putting quite a bit of emphasize on the avoidance of minor ninths in voicings. The bottom line of this observation was that chords that are supposed to create some sort of stability might become quite instable and tenseful by using unfortunate voicings that include a minor ninth.
However up to this point I deliberately excluded one essential factor in this: chords that are supposed to have tension.
Music lives from the duality between tension and release. One of the most obvious cases are V-I resolutions. In order to create a satisfying resolution at the tonic, the dominant that precedes it needs to have a higher degree of tension.
In general, tension is created in the way how the notes of a voicing interact on an intervallic level. Voicings with more dissonant intervals sound more tensful than voicings with more consonant intervals in spite of displaying the same chord.
Let's for instance voice a Cmaj9(#11) chord in two different ways to compare:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/cmaj911-different-voicings/s-PPDjv99ZgRY
Observe how the first voicing is structured with a focus on more dissonant minor and major seconds while the second voicing is almost entirely a stack of consonant perfect fifths (with one major second in the middle).
While the character of the CHORD is the same, the character of the VOICING is quite different with the first sounding more compact and "rubbing" while the second one creates quite a lot of stability and transparency.
To make my point about tension and release with V-I cadences a little bit more obvious, let's take this Cmaj9(#11) chord as  a tonic of a V-I cadence which could be quite probable in a composition that employs extended harmony. In spite of the many consonant fifths it still has a lot of tension in itself but most people would agree that it doesn't necessarily needs to resolve anywhere to "stabilize" but we could live with this chord standing in for a tonic chord.
If now I decide to create a dominant for it that doesn't exceed the amount of tension of this tonic, the whole concept of a V-I would be eliminated.
Observe how musically unpleasing a very straight forward G7 as a dominant functions in this case:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/weak-v-i/s-G6VYkt042pR
If anything it feels like the I sounds more tenseful than the V.
So in order to create a proper tension-release, we need to "charge" our V with more tension - more intervallic dissonance.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/strong-v-i/s-WIn291XhsTU
This resolution (while sounding quite complex) feels more satisfying as the dominant chord is enhanced with more tenseful intervals (minor sevenths (f-eb), tritones (g-c#)) including the previously demonized minor ninth between the outermost notes of G and Ab.
(As a side note, in spite of this chord seeming like I've thrown in random dissonances, it still follows a diatonic scale as source material which would be the seventh mode of melodic minor, more commonly known as the "altered" scale. We could also call this chord G7alt.)
In this case, the high degree of dissonance of a minor ninth helps us to make this V-I more plausible.
However, it doesn't need to be this complex to make use of the minor ninth. While emotional responses are very subjective, many people would agree that a minor ninth feels somewhat painful and desperate.
Observe how the minor ninth in this V-i adds more "despair" compared to the straight dominant 7th:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g7b9/s-8SZERDfMVBR
In fact in most dominant chords that lead to a minor tonic sound great with the minor ninth added.
Minor ninths very often sound sad and desperate, however they also can have some sort of sneakyness to them.
A great example here would be CATCH ME IF YOU CAN by John Williams:

The whole opening statement of the movie revolves around a chord structure that looks like this:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/cmiyc/s-ZN2AkuIiPmo
This composition drives the concept of intervallic construction even further. This chord consists of two stacked perfect fourths plus a minor third which creates a framing interval of a minor ninth. This chord behaves even like a tonic in this piece, but it can be observed that the whole composition doesn't rely on V-I cadences at all but rather statically hovers over this harmonic world with chromatic sidesteps.
However, it leaves the territory of unambigous harmony as it would be quite tricky to put a chord symbol to that chord:
It could be Gm/A or maybe an incomplete Am11(b9), or maybe some sort of Bbmaj7? Of course it absolutely is Williams' intention here to stay ambiguous, harmonically somehow undefined as this completely supports the narrative of the story of the movie.
But you can see the more strictly you follow the idea of constructing voicings/chords based on intervallic properties (here to be seen in the slightly cool quality of stacking perfect fourths) the more you might drift away from having clear and unambiguous chords.
But you can also see that the internal intervals you choose to construct a "regular" chord make an impact on how it feels like.
This whole approach described here which mainly focuses on the minor ninth can be executed with any interval of course. The conscious decision to use more or less dissonant intervals or even favor one specific interval can create very different hues of the same chord. Gaining conscious control over this will help you tremendously to shape your compositons into the direction you desire.

A little addition here as I forgot to mention this in one of the previous parts: You might have noticed in the examples that I chose above but also in previous parts that in some of the more complex chords I leave out the perfect fifth of the chord. This is a common thing to do and also translates to orchestral voicings. The perfect fifth will very often resonate in the root note anyway as a harmonic so adding it to the voicing very often makes it thicker and less transparent without helping the overall sound. However this is no general rule, in some cases it might sound better to add it so trust your ears on this.