# Tundra Longwalk v3a — White Distance (the faithful tread)

`tundra-longwalk-v3a` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take A is the FAITHFUL realization of the row's style: muffled house (tread), high end rolled off, a walking pluck in even quarters + a snowCrunch ghost-percussion, D aeolian (clean), 80 BPM. The TREAD motif is at HOME here (it owns the reference statement): even quarter-note steps in the narrow 1-2-3 span returning to the tonic, the walk itself made musical. Every bed pad voice has its high end rolled off (dark warmPad + low-`bright` softPad) so it sounds acoustically 'snowed in' — and the retired §3 falling-snow hush is folded into a thin, buried high PAD tone (pitched), never a wind/air/noise bed (correction 3). Activity L1 (ch4-5) is the TREAD walking pluck stated from D-4 (soft pluck, high rolled off) with a tight soft echo, over the snowCrunch ghost-rhythm of footfalls (percussion one-shots — step crunch on the beat, a softer trailing-foot crunch between). Activity L2 (ch6-7) ADDS new material, not volume: a low second-walker counter-line a sixth below (TREAD transposed -5, lagging a step) AND a soft muffled comping pulse on the offbeats (struckPiano, tone WARM — the muffled-house touch; warm fits the snowed-in, contrast-turned-down mood over bright). Danger is ENCOUNTER music for the whiteout, abstract not foley: danger1 (ch8-9) is the walk gone apprehensive — the even tread survives but as a SOFTENED, blurred low pulse (soft attack-rounded kick) under a darkening D/A hollow-fifth drone with sparse far booms; real unease, navigation under threat, not near-silence. Danger2 (ch10-11) is a GENUINE intensity jump: the whole danger SECTION runs at a faster 96 BPM, and the drum KIT crashes in — a driving snareDrum backbeat on 2 and 4 + a doubled galloping kick, plus an urgent blurred shaker/hat tick layer (the whiteout's blur, denser). It is new rhythmic material and higher density at a faster tempo — the full ensemble navigating the storm, NOT danger1 with the fader up. Dread is abstract — register, density, the tread blurring into a faster denser pulse — never chromatic darkening and never a literal wind/snow foley (that belongs to the game's SFX + ambient soundscape). Fully diatonic D aeolian (clean) throughout.
