Parhelion 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 23 stems (the kick, the sub, the bass, the 303, the hats, the percussion, the lead, the counter, the pluck, the arp, the pad, the stab, the piano, the strings, the choir, the brass, the timpani, the room, the plate, the hall, the cloud, the effects and the DJ effects), 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
Parhelion 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 track's key, 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 Parhelion-<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, a track 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

• Parhelion-1.2.0-Setup.exe -- installs the standalone, the VST3, the renderer and the manual; the runtime is linked in.
• Parhelion-1.2.0-portable.zip -- the same in one archive, nothing to install.
• ParhelionQuest-1.2.0.apk -- the native Meta Quest app (adb install -r ParhelionQuest-1.2.0.apk, developer mode).
• Parhelion-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): Parhelion-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.

Parhelion demos

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

demo	file	renderer arguments
Uplifting	uplifting.mp3	--seed 7 --minutes 5 --style Uplifting
Progressive	progressive.mp3	--seed 11 --minutes 5 --style Progressive
Dream House	dream.mp3	--seed 23 --minutes 5 --style "Dream House"
Acid	acid.mp3	--seed 42 --minutes 5 --style Acid
Deep	deep.mp3	--seed 5 --minutes 5 --style Deep

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

Parhelion 1.1.0

Parhelion 1.1.0

The first public release: a generator of trance -- whole tracks and DJ sets, composed from a seed and synthesised
while they play. Standalone and VST3 for Windows, a command-line renderer, and a native app for Meta Quest.
Everything is synthesised; there are no samples.

Downloads

• Parhelion-1.1.0-Setup.exe -- installs the standalone, the VST3, the renderer and the manual. The runtime is
  linked in; nothing else has to be installed.
• Parhelion-1.1.0-portable.zip -- the same, in one archive, nothing to install.
• ParhelionQuest-1.1.0.apk -- the native Meta Quest build (adb install -r ParhelionQuest-1.1.0.apk, developer
  mode). Built and signed, not yet run on a headset.
• Parhelion-Manual.pdf -- every page of the panel as a picture, every parameter.
• SHA256SUMS.txt -- the checksums of all of them.

What is in it

• The composer. Five styles -- Uplifting, Progressive, Dream House, Acid, Deep -- calibrated against 30 measured
  reference tracks. A planner writes the form and the layer matrix (the breakdown with its tease and peak, the build,
  the empty beat before the drop), the harmony, the drums, the bass, the pad and the melody; the effects and the
  automation follow, and a leveler sets the drop's loudness and the breakdown's distance to it.
• A motif of its own. The lead's motif is drawn from statistics of royalty-free MIDI packs under the rules as hard
  constraints, in its versions from the tease to the main drop, and checked bar by bar against 144250 two-bar windows
  of transcriptions of famous tracks (kept only as hashes) so that no known motif comes out.
• DJ sets of any length. Five dramaturgies (Warm-up, Peak, Closing, Sunrise, Journey), harmonic mixing round the
  Camelot wheel, blends over the DJ intros and outros with one bass swap, the next track's hook teased on a third deck.
• The sound. Kick, sub, mid-bass and a 303; a twelve-lane kit; six polyphonic voices on the JP-8000's supersaw, VA,
  FM or wavetable through ten circuit-modelled filters, with the trance gate; a physical piano after Pianoteq's
  principle; an orchestra of bowed modal strings, a choir from the glottal source and formants, brass from lips on a
  bore and timpani; effects and a granular cloud; the pump of the ghost kick on every bus; room, plate and hall.
  Eighteen factory banks of 1024 presets, each with its modulation; a mod envelope, four LFOs and an eight-slot matrix
  on every melodic voice.
• Playing. The host's transport and tempo; a Perform page with mutes, master filter, echo throw, mod wheel, and
  "Breakdown now" and "Drop now", which rewrite the playing track from its next 8-bar line. New in 1.1.0: play it
  yourself -- a MIDI keyboard plays a voice (the kit, the bass, the 303, the six polyphonic voices, the piano, the
  strings, the choir, the brass, or by channel) with the sound its page has; Replace, Layer, and the composer switch
  that leaves every generated note out.
• Export. WAV with a cue marker at every section, the cues as JSON and as a rekordbox collection, DJ loops, MIDI
  with the program changes, stems that sum to the mix.
• The family's panel (new in 1.1.0), shared with Phosphene, Ephemeris and Totality: the same header, tabs, keys
  and right click on every control, Undo and Redo of every change, Help (F1) by topic, settings, a live ring round
  every knob the composer moves, the mixer as a console, no page that scrolls; a track or a DJ mix chosen in the top
  bar, and an arrangement that zooms down to four bars.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, a processor with AVX2 (Intel from Haswell, 2013; AMD from Ryzen).
• For the plugin: a VST3 host. For the app: Meta Quest 2 or later.

Notes

• Tested: the self tests and vector tests, the VST3 loaded as a host loads it, the documentation check, pluginval at
  strictness 10 -- in the release configuration (Intel oneAPI).
• The installer and the program are not code-signed: Windows' SmartScreen may warn once ("More info", "Run anyway").
• Parhelion 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" in the settings turns it off.
• Licence: AGPL-3.0. The source is at https://github.com/reneweller-coding/Parhelion.