# Flats Crossing v3a — The Long Shimmer (faithful percussive shuffle)

`flats-crossing-v3a` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take A is the FAITHFUL realization of the row's PERCUSSIVE shuffle: a motoring sub-and-shaker train-shuffle (the rare bed with a PULSE — stillness on the salt flats IS motion) under static open-fifth pads, with a riff-like F# minor pentatonic melody in short repeating cells (mile markers). 116 BPM, speed 6 throughout. The shuffle lives in the sub + shaker: a swung straight-eighth lilt where each beat carries a firm down-pulse and a lighter LATE 'and' (a long-short 2:1 clatter — the train). The pads are static wide dyads that only drift slowly between F#/A/B colors — the flats have no features, so the harmony doesn't either; only the rhythm walks. MOTIF = TREAD (§7.5), augment(0.5)-diminished into tight 16-row eighth-cells that lock to the shuffle, F# minor pentatonic (the pentatonic snap hollows TREAD's 2). Activity L1 (ch4-5) = the riff cell (pluck) + a soft-pluck echo a beat behind — the first marker and its shimmer. Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS NEW material, not volume: a counter-riff a fourth below (TREAD transposed -3 degrees) answering in the gaps AND an offbeat hatTick filling the shuffle's 'and's so the motor becomes a groove. Danger L1 (ch8-9) = the crust starting to give: the shuffle gone apprehensive — the kick DISPLACED off the grid (landing a row late, never where the foot expects) under a low F#/C# drone, with wet bubbleBlip transients welling up — real material, the ground becoming a guess (NOT near-silence). Danger L2 (ch10-11) = active flee, a GENUINE intensity jump: a doubled stumbling kick run filling the subdivisions, dryClick ticks DOUBLING across the grid, and an urgent hot-shaker storm — the whole surface buckling, denser and higher-energy, new instruments arriving, NOT danger1 louder. Dread is ABSTRACT — the brine-mud crust failure is rendered as the GRID destabilizing (displacement, doubling, density), never as a literal foley of breaking ground or splashing water (game SFX domain, correction 3); the §3.10 'heat shimmer + glare noise' Depth bed is RETIRED, its intent folded into a thin high shimmer PAD tone in the bed, not a noise drone. Fully diatonic F# minor pentatonic; no chromaticism.
