# Sky Archipelago v3a — Islands in the Blue (faithful)

`sky-archipelago-v3a` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take A is the faithful, polished realization of the row's style — OPEN AIRY HOUSE in E major, 108 BPM, light 4/4 — and of the §3.8 design notes for 'Islands in the Blue': drifting wonder with groundlessness rendered as REGISTER. Both pad voices sit high (B-4 and up) and lean on stacked fifths/ninths with thirds kept thin, so the harmony floats rather than plants; the sub enters LATE within each half-bar and softly (the floor is always a little far below you); a windChime is touched once a bar — the one diegetic sound the brief asks for, as a pitched chime cluster one-shot, NOT a wind/air noise bed (the §3/§4 'altitude wind airPad' Depth note is retired). This is a STANDALONE interpretation (§7.7): no leitmotif is quoted because the whole identity is the LEAPING line — sixths and octaves where the ground-level themes step. Activity L1 (ch4-5) is that leaping pluck lead plus a soft-pluck echo drifting wide in the stereo field. Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS new material, not volume: a SECOND leaping voice — a caveCelesta counterline that answers a sixth/octave away, hocketing in the gaps the lead leaves — AND a wide open arpeggio undercurrent; two leaping voices over the open pads, the soundscape filled out. Danger is ENCOUNTER music, abstract not literal: danger1 (ch8-9) is the approach — the airy tune gone apprehensive, the open pads thinned to a tense stacked-fifth E pedal with the sub dropping out (the floor vanishing), a tight even hat pulse and sparse gust-stab transients riding above. Real unease, not near-silence and not a 'falling' foley. Danger2 (ch10-11) is a GENUINE intensity jump for active fight/flee at a FASTER danger-section tempo (132 BPM): the drum KIT crashes in — a driving kick run + a snare backbeat (ch10) — and the gust-stabs double up over a fast shaker (ch11). New rhythmic instruments and far higher density: the full ensemble, not danger1 with the fader up. Dread is register + density + speed; fully diatonic E major throughout, no chromatic darkening and no storm/fall foley (those belong to the game's SFX + ambient soundscape, not the score).
