I also heard the fascinating "This American Life" piece about the notes, intervals and chordal qualities of ambient sounds, and I've set off exploring the historic meanings assigned to these intervals.
Do you know where in Deryck Cooke's writings that he gives his descriptions of interval qualities?
Regarding "House Tuning": it isn't so far-fetched. If there is an art of placement, like feng shui, that harmonizes ("tunes") the spatial arrangement of a room or a house, there is surely a corresponding art of house/room tuning in the sonic sense. In the novel "Shibumi," the main character is part Japanese and has absorbed many of the oriental arts of contemplation and meditation. There is a scene in which he sits in his garden listening deeply to the sound of raindrops falling on the broad leaves of plants. He has planted and arranged them specifically for the tones produced by raindrops falling on them. I think also of the use of windchimes and other sound-producing items that create a soundscape. We could probably "tune" our household appliances to emit a particular note in much the same way that a luthier will tune a piece of wood used in a stringed instrument. No, house-tuning is not far-fetched at all.
