# Ruins / The Old Music — take A2: the reconstructed salon combo, re-spun (A♭ jazz, HEARTH)

`ruins-oldmusic-v3a2` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take A2 — the RE-SPIN of take A's faithful jazz reading of The Old Music: a diegetic salon combo reconstructing the dead city's courtly 3/4 evenings, keeping the pleasant gently-melancholy nostalgia the owner loved. A♭ major, 88 BPM, 3/4. PIANO: the comping piano is now `struckPiano` tone WARM (the old feltPiano was a Karplus-Strong plucked string) — warm is the low-light ballroom voice: a mellow strike blooming into a warm sustain, intimate not bright. Calm is the ballroom at low light — struck-piano comping on each bar downbeat with a left-hand oom-pah, warm pad, sub on beat one — bed alone. Activity L1 brings the courtly MELODY: a muted-brass lead (two free strains, then HEARTH stated as the dance's second strain with ornamental celesta turns on the 6–5) over the calm sway. Activity L2 adds the SALON BAND as genuinely new material — a walking upright bass in steady quarter-steps plus brushed-snare/ride swing comping — the rhythm section arriving, not the lead louder. DANGER is now ENCOUNTER music, abstract not literal: danger1 is the WARY FIRST SIGNS — the dance stiffens, an uneasy low pulse marks beats 1 and 3 with the odd wary tick (real tension on its own, not near-silence). danger2 is a genuine INTENSITY JUMP — the fight/flee encounter: new material on two fronts, a DRIVING doubled pulse (a boom on every beat plus a relentless offbeat tick — the chase gait) AND an URGENT anxious LEAD on muted brass that drives and never resolves. That makes L2 a higher-energy escalation, not danger1 turned up, and it evokes dread without any literal collapse/rockfall painting. CHROMATIC INTENT (the jazz exception): the beds run ii–V motion (Bbm7→Eb7→Abmaj7) and a secondary dominant C7→Fm7 whose E-natural is the deliberate leading tone into vi, the activity lead brushes 7th/9th color, and the danger2 lead is an altered/diminished figure (an Adim7 lean over Ab, an Eb7b9 with its b9 and #5, a tritone bite over C7) — the harmony itself dreads. Every chromatic tone is a functional jazz color, never accidental atmosphere.
