# Sunless Crossing v3b — Two Rowers (melodic 6/8 barcarolle)

`sunless-crossing-v3b` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

The BOLDER reading of the Black Water Ferry: a melodic 6/8 barcarolle in B aeolian (clean), 68 BPM. It leans all the way into the design note's 'low counterline like a second rower' — the activity-L2 payoff is a genuine SECOND melodic voice (a bowed low counterline rowing against the lead in contrary motion), so the boat carries two rowers, not one with a thicker accompaniment. The rocking oar-stroke is the bed's SUB: a long-short dotted-quarter 6/8 sway (a strong pull on each bar downbeat, a lighter lift near the bar end) under low open-fifth pads, with a swellPad cresting once per bar like the hull lifting on the pull — the 'lamp the only moon' glow is rendered PITCHED (bowed/swell pads), with the v2 take's waterLap retired: no continuous water/air in the score (correction 3). The lead is the HORIZON motif octave-DOWN and minor-shadowed — its rise-to-the-fifth contour with the minor 3rd darkening the rise and the accent ceiling lowered (resolve, the horizon replaced by a rumor of the far shore, not triumph) — re-seated into the 6/8 lilt as long barcarolle arcs on struckPiano, tone WARM (intimate lamplight over the bright extreme). Activity L1 (ch4-5) is that piano arc plus a soft-pluck echo trailing like a reflection broken on the water. Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS new material, not volume: the second-rower bowedPad counterline a third/sixth below in its own contour AND a sparse caveCelesta shimmer dropped between the strokes. Danger L1 (ch8-9) is the wakes converging — the barcarolle gone apprehensive: a frameDrum wake-pulse landing OUT OF SYNC with the oar-stroke (it no longer matches your rhythm, something else is moving) over a darkening B/E drone and a low hull-register deepBoom — real unease, not near-silence. Danger L2 (ch10-11) is the active flee at the danger section's faster tempo (84 BPM): the full ensemble crashing in — a driving frameDrum + kick row-the-boat gallop and an urgent shaker on the compound subdivision with hat motion. It is new rhythmic material and higher density at a quicker tempo — a genuine intensity JUMP over danger1, not danger1 with the fader up. Dread is abstract (register, the wakes' out-of-sync convergence, density, tempo); never a literal foley of water/wakes/a creature. Fully diatonic B aeolian throughout — no chromaticism.
