# Rift Brink v3a — The Brink (faithful): ultra-sparse piano vertigo

`rift-brink-v3a` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take A is the FAITHFUL, polished baseline of the row: ULTRA-SPARSE PIANO AMBIANCE for The Brink (C minor pentatonic, 52 BPM — the catalog's slowest). Vertigo rendered as STILLNESS: a hollow root+fifth pad dyad every two bars (no third anywhere — the bed is hollow), a sub that arrives LATE (off the downbeat, a held breath released), and struckPiano / caveCelesta single tones dropped into silence with their full natural decays. Piano = struckPiano tone WARM (a single tone left to die in a vast cold space; the bright voice would be too present here). VAULT motif (§7.3) as fragment(0,6): just the root and fifth reaches, the OCTAVE reach withheld and the pentatonic snap removing the 6 — the look down that never completes the climb; the motif means vertigo, awe at what DROPS. Calm (bed, ch0-3) is complete on its own: dyad + late sub + one piano tone ringing out per pattern — the style's signature already present. Activity L1 (ch4-5) is the struckPiano VAULT statement (cautious edge-walking) plus one soft celesta far-echo. Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS NEW MATERIAL, not volume: caveCelesta glints placed into the silence like reflections far below AND a warm bloom pad held under the long decays so each drop lands on something. Danger is ENCOUNTER music (correction 2): the whole danger section runs a notch FASTER (68 BPM — the ground falling away quicker under you). Danger L1 (ch8-9) is real unease — wide-stereo deepBooms gliding across the field over a darkDrone pedal at the floor of hearing (material, not near-silence). Danger L2 (ch10-11) is a GENUINE intensity jump for active fight/flee: a quickening low kick pulse, nearer closing booms, and a low struckPiano tonic tremor driving beneath — denser + faster, not danger1 with the fader up. NO ambient soundscape (correction 3): the §3/§4 'wind from the gap' and 'chasm exhalation' Depth beds are RETIRED — there is no wind/air/breath material at all; the gap is just silence, and the only rumble is the struck deepBoom (a one-shot percussion). Fully diatonic C minor pentatonic throughout — vertigo by space, register and tempo, never chromaticism or foley.
