# Sky Updraft v3a — The Long Updraft (gliding waltz)

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

FAITHFUL take: a full-melodic gliding 3/4 waltz in A mixolydian, 126 BPM — the catalog's fastest, a dancing triple time. The bed IS the waltz: a sub downbeat 'oom' on beat 1 and a warm-pad fifth lifting on beats 2 and 3 (the 'pah-pah'), with a swellPad thermal cresting once per two bars and a soft high pad colouring the turn — a 12-row 3/4 bar (beat = 4 rows), four bars per pattern, so standing still already turns in circles riding a thermal. The HORIZON motif is spun into the waltz: stated recognizably once at the top of activity (renderMotif over the triple grid — rises 1-2-3 to the crest on 5, brushes 6, ends open on 2, the crest landing on a downbeat and the open 2 swinging into the next bar), then wound out as spinning phrases that lean the mixolydian b7 (G-natural) to keep the crest hungry — 'flight, the horizon crossed instead of chased.' Activity L1 (ch4-5) is the spinning pluck melody plus its soft-pluck echo a beat later (the spin, then its trail round). Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS NEW material, not volume: a warm-pad counterline a third/sixth below (the dance partner) AND the PERSISTENT triple-time arpeggio undercurrent (the row note's signature — a pluck sweeping up the chord every bar with a pickup eighth lifting into the next, the spin the melody rides on). Danger is the storm cell, abstract: danger1 (ch8-9) is the waltz gone apprehensive — the oom-pah-pah keeps turning on a darker, warier pad, but a DISPLACED SECOND ACCENT creeps in (a far deepBoom on beat 3 pulling against the downbeat, tilting the meter) and a low shear drone RISES as pitched density (the cloud-layer noise wash and pitch-dulled pedal are retired, rendered pitched instead); real material, the lift sensed going wrong. Danger2 (ch10-11) is active fight/flee at a FASTER danger tempo (152): the meter's stability TILTS — a driving kit makes the dance lurch and pitch like losing lift over the void (kick anchoring beat 1, the snare CRASHING the displaced beat 3 so the second accent fights the downbeat, an urgent shaker driving every beat and off-beat, hatTick motion above). A genuine intensity jump, new rhythmic material, never danger1 louder; the danger bed withdraws the swellPad thermal (the lift failing). Fully diatonic A mixolydian throughout; the only colour is the modal b7, no chromatic darkening, no literal storm/wind-shear foley (that belongs to the game's SFX + ambient soundscape).
