Ephemeris 1.2.0

MIDI out. In a DAW the plugin sends what it plays: every note of every part at the moment it sounds, a channel
per part as in the MIDI file of an export, the muted parts left out; a stop or a jump of the transport sends all notes
off. Record a part as notes, or let another instrument double it.

Outputs of their own. Besides the main output, a stereo output for each of its fifteen channel strips (the eight rows, the lead, the drone, the tape keys, the strings, the poly synth, the drums and the atmosphere) and one for the rooms, off until the
DAW switches them on; each carries its part before the master while the main output plays on.

Ableton Link in the standalone (Settings > Ableton Link, off to begin with): with other Link apps in the session
Ephemeris takes their tempo, lines its bars up with theirs and starts and stops with them; alone it offers its own tempo.

The keyboard's options, each off until chosen (the Keyboard group): Lower Keys Play and Split At divide the keys
between two voices, Scale Lock keeps every key in the piece's scale, Velocity Curve (As Played, Soft, Hard, Fixed) shapes the
touch. A release always ends the note its press started.

On a Mac. Every release gets a build for Apple Silicon (macOS 12 or newer) -- the standalone and the VST3 --,
built and tested on GitHub's runners by the workflow macos and attached to the release as Ephemeris-<version>-macOS.zip.
It is signed ad hoc, not notarized (that takes a paid Apple account; README-macOS.txt in the zip says how to open it),
and it has not yet been played on a real Mac.

Demos. The release "demos" holds a track per style as an MP3 and one of them as a video with pictures by
KaleidoscopeEnhanced, its cuts placed by the track's own
score cues; Tools/demo/make_demos.py renders them all again.

Behind the panel. A sound check (Tools/soundcheck.py, ctest -L sound): five styles, four minutes each, and their stems, measured by loudness
(BS.1770) against Tests/golden/soundcheck.json, so a change that makes a style louder, quieter or emptier shows up
before anybody listens. A CI run on every push (GitHub Actions: the build and the tests on Windows, the documentation
check on Linux) that nobody waits for. One release script for the family (Deploy/publish_release.ps1: the notes from
this file, the checksums, the tag, the release).

Downloads

• Ephemeris-1.2.0-Setup.exe -- installs the standalone, the VST3, the renderer and the manual; the runtime is linked in.
• Ephemeris-1.2.0-portable.zip -- the same in one archive, nothing to install.
• EphemerisQuest-1.2.0.apk -- the native Meta Quest app (adb install -r EphemerisQuest-1.2.0.apk, developer mode).
• Ephemeris-Manual.pdf -- every page of the panel as a picture, every parameter.
• SHA256SUMS.txt -- the checksums of all of them.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (x64) with AVX2 (every x86-64 since 2013), a VST3 host for the plugin, Meta Quest 2 or
later for the app. The installer is not code-signed: Windows' SmartScreen may warn once ("More info", "Run anyway").
Licence: AGPL-3.0.
The macOS zip (Apple Silicon) is built on GitHub's runners and attached here by the workflow macos within
the hour; it is signed ad hoc, not notarized, and not yet tried on a real Mac.

Linux (added the same evening): Ephemeris-1.2.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz -- the standalone, the VST3 and the renderer for x86-64 (glibc 2.35 or newer: Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Fedora 36 and later), built and tested on GitHub's Ubuntu runners and tried under WSL; README-Linux.txt inside says where everything goes.

Ephemeris demos

Demos of Ephemeris, rendered by its own eph_render from the settings below -- nothing played in, nothing edited.

demo	file	renderer arguments
Cosmic	cosmic.mp3	--seed 7 --minutes 5 --set compose.style=Cosmic
Doom	doom.mp3	--seed 11 --minutes 5 --set compose.style=Doom
Melodic	melodic.mp3	--seed 23 --minutes 5 --set compose.style=Melodic
Modern	modern.mp3	--seed 42 --minutes 5 --set compose.style=Modern
Drift	drift.mp3	--seed 5 --minutes 5 --set compose.style=Drift

The video (cosmic.mp4) is the Cosmic demo with pictures by KaleidoscopeEnhanced (configuration SpaceAmbient), its cuts placed by the track's own score cues. Made by Tools/demo/make_demos.py.

Ephemeris 1.1.0

Ephemeris 1.1.0

Play it yourself, the family's panel, and a piece, a concert or a night set in the top bar.

Downloads

• Ephemeris-1.1.0-Setup.exe -- installs the standalone, the VST3, the renderer and the manual; the runtime is
  linked in.
• Ephemeris-1.1.0-portable.zip -- the same, nothing to install.
• EphemerisQuest-1.1.0.apk -- the native Meta Quest build (adb install -r EphemerisQuest-1.1.0.apk, developer
  mode).
• Ephemeris-Manual.pdf -- every page as a picture, every parameter; a new chapter, The panel.
• SHA256SUMS.txt -- the checksums.

New in 1.1.0

• Play it yourself. A Keyboard group on the Perform page: Keyboard Plays sends the keys of a MIDI keyboard to a
  voice -- the lead, the drone, the poly synth, the tape keys, the strings, the drums, a row, or each on its channel --
  with the sound its page has. Replace leaves that voice's composed notes out, Layer plays over them; Composer off leaves
  every composed note out, so only what is played sounds, through the mix and the effects as composed. The keys play on
  their samples; an export plays what was composed. With Keyboard Plays off the keys transpose the rows as before.
• One panel for the family (Totality, Parhelion, Ephemeris and Phosphene): the header's two rows, the overview, the
  tabs in one order (Set, Arrange, Rack, Synths, Atmosphere, Drums, Rooms, Mixer, Perform, Export, Style), the same keys
  (Space, Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y, F1, F11, Esc, Ctrl+S / Ctrl+O / Ctrl+E) and the same right click on every control (MIDI
  learn, forget, the default). A picture behind the panel, kept low in contrast.
• Undo and Redo of every change, step by step; Help (F1) inside the plugin by topic; Settings with the
  update check, the picture, the headset, the window's size, full screen, the keys and About.
• A live ring round every knob the composer moves shows where it stands at this moment.
• No page scrolls. The window opens at 1280 x 860; a tab of several modules has a small tab for each, and a page
  still taller than the window shows its groups in sections.
• A piece, a concert or a night set is chosen in the top bar with three buttons and one length; Compose says what it
  writes. The arrange view zooms with the mouse wheel down to four bars, with a ruler in bars or minutes and the
  notes themselves in the lanes.
• The same controllers in every generator: 74 the filters, 11 the echo throw, 64 Hold Moves; the mod wheel is no
  longer bound to the filters. The automation is called "the moves" now.
• The headset only when there is one. Its controls show only while a headset sends; the Quest app plays the
  desktop's Ephemeris in bridge mode, in the grammar every generator's headset shares.
• For developers: every instrument of the family builds the same way (build.ps1, CMakePresets.json); every
  entity of the sources has its Doxygen comment, and the test doccheck keeps it so.

Checked in the release configuration (Intel oneAPI): the self tests, the vector tests, the VST3 as a host loads it,
the documentation check, pluginval at strictness 10.

Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (x64) with AVX2, and a VST3 host for the plugin; Meta Quest 2 or later for the app. The
installer is not code-signed: SmartScreen may warn once. Licence: AGPL-3.0.

Ephemeris 1.0.0

Ephemeris 1.0.0

The first public release: a generator for long Berlin School pieces, whole concerts and night sets -- sequencer rows
interlocking on modelled analogue voices, a composer that plays the form, the sounds and a player's hands on the
knobs, and the rooms around them. Standalone and VST3 for Windows, and a native app for Meta Quest. Everything is
synthesised; there are no samples.

What is in it

• The composer. Five styles (Cosmic, Doom, Melodic, Modern, Drift) and one of your own; pieces of any length,
  concerts that morph from style to style, night sets that overlap as a DJ mixes; every part rerolled on its own;
  sets saved and loaded; WAV (with stems) and MIDI export.
• The voices. Eight sequencer rows, a lead and a drone on modular voices: five classic VCOs (Moog 921, Prophet-5,
  Oberheim SEM, ARP 2600, E-mu Modular) beside the analogue pair, with hard sync and cross mod, band-limited; ten
  circuit-modelled filters (Moog ladder, Prophet and Juno cascades, Oberheim SEM, Xpander pole mixing, diode ladder,
  Korg35, Polivoks, EDP Wasp, comb), solved sample by sample.
• Modulation on every synth. Full ADSRs for amp and filter, a mod envelope, four LFOs (synced to the bar or free,
  retriggered, fading in) and an eight-slot matrix on the voices, the lead, the drone and the pad synth; two LFOs and
  four slots on the tape keys and the string machine.
• More instruments. A tape keyboard (choir, strings, flute and the machine), a string machine after the
  Streichfett, a polyphonic wavetable pad synth (51 tables), drums for the styles that have them, an atmosphere.
• Rooms and mix. Tape echo, bucket-brigade delay, springs, hall or plate, early reflections, a blend room, a
  shimmer hall; a mix after a production guide for depth and clarity; every piece's loudest part levelled to its
  style's target.
• Sounds you can take over. 1024 factory presets per synth, most of them with modulation. The composer sets the
  piece's presets and mix on the knobs themselves: the pages show what plays, and a knob you turn moves from there.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, a processor with AVX2 (Intel from Haswell, 2013; AMD from Ryzen).
• For the plugin: a VST3 host.
• The Quest app: Meta Quest 2 or later, installed with adb install -r EphemerisQuest-1.0.0.apk (developer mode).

Notes

• The installer and the program are not code-signed yet: Windows' SmartScreen may warn once ("More info", "Run
  anyway").
• Ephemeris asks GitHub once a day whether a newer release is out and shows it in the status row (nothing else is
  sent, nothing is downloaded); the switch "Update check" turns it off.
• Licence: AGPL-3.0. The source is at https://github.com/reneweller-coding/Ephemeris.