# Beach Driftwood v3b — Steel-Band Reading (calypso, riptide-countdown danger)

`beach-driftwood-v3b` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

The BOLDER beach-driftwood take: a full steel-band/calypso reading of the sunny-house brief (C major, 104 BPM, HEARTH round), where a faithful take would play the house straight. Correction 3: the old waterLap/surf identity is GONE — the surf line is re-imagined entirely PITCHED as a pad I-IV-V-vi motion with a light shaker pulse marking the swell, and the calypso ENGINE is an offbeat pad+pluck SKANK on the and-of-each-beat (the bed sways like a steel band warming up, no water/wind/air material anywhere; every noise patch is a struck one-shot — shaker/kick/snare/ride). Calm = the pitched-surf bed + skank + light shaker, complete leisure on its own. Activity L1 (ch4-5) is the HEARTH round voiced as the steel-pan lead (a bright pluck) plus its offbeat soft-pluck comping. Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS new material, not volume: the PARALLEL-THIRD twin pan doubling the lead (the two-pan steel shimmer) AND a running chord-tone arpeggio — three voices, the band filled out. Per §7.2 the HEARTH settle is delayed and ringed by the offbeat comping: 'leisure, warmth with sand in it.' Danger is the riptide as an abstract closing RHYTHMIC pulse (water as countdown, never foleyed). Danger1 (ch8-9) is the tide turning — the calypso skank gone apprehensive: an offbeat pluck leaning to the minor vi (Am), a slow kick PULL once a bar (the undertow), a darkening drone + far boom. Real material, not near-silence. Danger2 (ch10-11) is being caught in it — a genuine intensity jump at a FASTER section tempo (124 BPM): the full kit crashes in — a driving doubled kick, a driving backbeat snare, a ride wash, and an accelerating offbeat shaker that displaces the skank into a chase. New rhythmic instruments + density, NOT danger1 with the fader up. Dread is abstract — tempo, density, the offbeat closing in, the lean to the relative minor — never a chromatic darkening and never a literal surf/riptide foley (that is the game's SFX domain). NOTE on the piano correction: this take uses NO piano (it is a pluck-led steel band), so the struckPiano fix does not apply; the lead is the bright pluck patch as a pan. Fully diatonic C major (with its diatonic vi) throughout.
