# Flats Mirror v3a — Sky Below (the faithful mirror)

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

Take A is the faithful, polished mirror. D lydian, 62 BPM (calm/activity); the danger section runs FASTER at 80 BPM as the intensity jump. sparse: true. The salt flats become a perfect mirror after rain — sky above and below — and this take writes that reflection into the ORCHESTRATION two ways, per the row's style brief. (1) EVERY bed voice is doubled an octave below at half volume: the pad (ch0, the sky) has its octave-down shadow on ch1 (the water) at ~half volume, and the sub (ch2) has its shadow on ch3 — the reflection is in the scoring, not a noise effect. (2) The melody's echo answers INVERTED — falling where the lead rose — a DIATONIC inversion about a scale-degree axis (degree F#), so the mirror stays in D lydian and never goes chromatic. flats-mirror carries no shared motif (§7.7): the mirror-writing device is the self-contained idea. The lydian #4 (G#) is a brushed glint in the line, not a hook. Ladders (L2 adds NEW material, not volume): activity L1 (ch4-5) is the struckPiano lead (tone BRIGHT — present and glassy, the articulate reflection-on-water the still flats want over a duller warm) plus its inverted caveCelesta echo (the mirror writing). Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS the reflection device APPLIED TO THE LEAD — a caveCelesta shadow of the melody an octave below at half volume (the water answering the sky) AND a sparse soft-pluck arpeggio of lydian reflections drifting across the stereo field. Danger L1 (ch8-9) is unease/the approach: the calm gone apprehensive — a distant DOUBLED thunderhead (a deepBoom paired with its sub-octave shadow boom, storm seen from above and below) over a slow low pulse and a darkening sub-octave drone — real material, not near-silence. Danger L2 (ch10-11) is active fight/flee: a genuine jump — over the faster 80-BPM section, a driving doubled kick, paired booms closing on the bar (sky + reflection landing together), and an urgent shaker tremolo. New rhythmic instruments and a denser, faster section, not danger1 with the fader up. Dread is abstract — the doubled thunderhead read through register/density and the faster pulse — never a literal storm/water/wind/air foley (those are the game's SFX and ambient soundscape). Fully diatonic D lydian throughout.
