# Tundra Longwalk v3b — Two Sets of Footprints (muffled-house tread, canon)

`tundra-longwalk-v3b` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

The BOLDER second reading of the muffled-house tread. Take A is the direct trudge; this take leans all the way into the HOUSE identity and restructures the walk as a CANON. D aeolian (clean), 80 BPM, speed 6. STYLE: muffled house (tread) — a soft four-on-the-floor pulse FELT more than heard, an offbeat pad 'chuff' (the house skank softened to felt), the whole high end rolled off by keeping every voice low-mid and using only soft/warm pad timbres. The world has its contrast turned down. MOTIF: TREAD (§7.5 home) — even quarter-note steps in the narrow 1-2-3 aeolian span returning to the tonic, stated literally as the walking pluck. Calm (ch0-3) is the muffled bed alone: held low/high open-fifth pads, the offbeat chuff, a sub landing only every other bar (snowed-in spacing). Activity L1 (ch4-5) = the walking pluck (TREAD, even quarters from D-4) plus the snowCrunch ghost-rhythm landing BETWEEN the steps (the squeak of weight shifting between footfalls) — a STRUCK one-shot, never a noise bed. Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS NEW material, not volume: the SECOND walker — a struckPiano (tone WARM: intimate, mellow, snowed-in, never bright) shadowing the TREAD line a beat late and an octave below (a one-voice canon, two sets of footprints), plus a warm counter-pad holding the open fifth as the road beneath them. New voices and a new contrapuntal idea, never the pluck louder. Danger is the WHITEOUT as abstract blur. Danger L1 (ch8-9) = the approach: the trudge gone apprehensive — the melody drops, the walking PULSE reduced to a wary muffled kick heartbeat under a darkening low-D pedal drone with one soft pressure boom per phrase. Real material, the player senses the storm closing (NOT near-silence). Danger L2 (ch10-11) = active flee through the whiteout — a GENUINE intensity jump at a FASTER section tempo (96 BPM): the full kit crashes in (driving doubled kick + backbeat snareDrum), the snowCrunch BLURS into a frantic run of steps, and tight hatTicks ride above as the whiteout rendered as RHYTHMIC DENSITY (softened, denser pulse, navigation under threat) — NOT wind-noise foley. New rhythmic instruments, higher energy and density, not danger1 with the fader up. Fully diatonic D aeolian throughout (no chromaticism — the tundra never menaces harmonically; cold is space, muffling, and register). The §3.6 falling-snow 'Depth' noise bed is RETIRED — its intent folded into the muffled register and the open-fifth pedal drone; the only noise is struck percussion (snowCrunch, kick, snare, hat).
