First, this is cool. As someone who studied Sound Engineering it's not often that you see this type of post on HN.
Second - The scientific journal that published the article looks really interesting - The Journal of New Music Research. I wasn't aware of this. Now to find out if the local college library subscribes!
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t71381...
I've just skimmed the article. If you know music theory (scales, intonation) and a little math you can at least get the gist of it. I agree with mycroftiv's comment. It's nice in the sense that it formalizes in a new way some knowledge we already had, but it doesn't seem to be anything new or surprising.
Second - The scientific journal that published the article looks really interesting - The Journal of New Music Research. I wasn't aware of this. Now to find out if the local college library subscribes! http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t71381...
Also, looks like a future issue in 2011 will be a special issue on 'Music and Machine Learning' http://www.auditory.org/mhonarc/2010/msg00428.html