# Ocean Doldrums (Glass Water) — v3a faithful, warm piano + bell glints

`ocean-doldrums-v3a` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

FAITHFUL take of Glass Water — the most direct, polished realization of the row's style (quiet piano/bell ambiance) and the §3/§4 notes. C lydian, 66 BPM; quiet struckPiano (tone WARM — becalmed is intimate and mellow, not bright) floats a high line that never cadences, with caveCelesta glints scattered like light on water. It is the VAULT motif fragmented: fragment(0,8) keeps only the three reaches (root, fifth, octave) and WITHHOLDS the 6–5 settle, stated high from C-5 so the long look down never ends. The bed is a single held lydian pad color over the DEEP itself — a pitched darkDrone two octaves under the root (the retired §3 'Depth' sub-drone rendered as a TONE, never a noise/water bed) — with a late sparse sub and a single bell touch per pattern; calm is bed only (ch0-3), sparse by design with a near-empty breath pattern. ACTIVITY layers cleanly: L1 (ch4-5) = the warm-piano floating statement + ONE wide-left soft-pluck echo drifting after it; L2 (ch6-7) ADDS NEW material — the caveCelesta reflections scattered across the stereo field (a new bright timbre, the water lighting up) AND a far-right echo drift (a second answering voice), never the lead turned up. DANGER is abstract ENCOUNTER music (corrections 2 & 3): danger1 (ch8-9) is real unease — the doldrums calm gone apprehensive: a low boom felt-first spaced far apart, the deep pressing closer (a pressure drone over the abyss), and a low wary piano fragment; the player senses something passing beneath. danger2 (ch10-11) is a GENUINE intensity jump for active fight/flee: the danger SECTION tempo lifts to 80 BPM and the ensemble crashes in — a driving hull-tom + a doubled low pulse under an urgent, compressed VAULT figure low in the register — new rhythmic material and higher density, not danger1 louder. Dread is by proximity, register, and drive; fully diatonic C lydian throughout (no chromaticism), and no literal foley of the thing in the water — that belongs to the game's SFX.
