Études

The samples are a book of twelve études — small pieces, in order. Played and read one after another, they are the instrument: each is written around one of its capacities, and the script itself is the score.

cargo run --release -- samples/01_a_single_voice.rhai

1. A Single Voice — one voice appears, holds its breath, and leaves.
2. Constellation — four ways to enter: a line, the peaks, the density, chance.
3. Gravity — the same root under two suns; the peaks listen to what is sounding, not to a chart.
4. Tension — the director leans on the terrain until it strains, then lets the gravity come home.
5. Settling — scattered voices glide to where the field can hold them.
6. Bells — struck bodies; the last bell lets the field choose its partials.
7. Heartbeat — no external scaffold is imposed; the population locks into a shared pulse.
8. Murmuration — a flock drifts into step, never commanded.
9. Rain — time without a beat, falling along the field.
10. Generations — voices live, starve, and are reborn where harmony can hold them.
11. Autumn Cycle — a directed harmony; the season turns and comes home.
12. Emergence and Resolution — everything at once, bent into a single arc.

Études 1–6 walk the consonance terrain (placement, gravity, tension, movement, timbre); 7–9 walk the rhythm continuum one region at a time; 10 closes the loop into life; 11–12 are directed by the composer. All études are compile-checked by the test suite, so they always match the current API.

One craft rule holds across the path: scaffolding is inaudible or embodied. Terrain anchors sing to the habitat bus, not to the audience, unless the drone is itself the subject, as with the suns of Gravity. Pulse carriers get resonant bodies and lives of their own, or the pulse is left to condense from the colony.

Research assays

samples/research/ holds comparison fixtures — heredity/selection ablations, external-scaffold rhythm controls, and mechanism studies. They study the instrument rather than play it, and are not part of the path.

Offline rendering

The conchordal instrument never writes audio to disk — performances are ephemeral by design. For offline WAV rendering use the separate conchordal-render binary, which shares the core engine but is not the instrument.