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

`ruins-oldmusic-v3a` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take A — the faithful jazz reading of The Old Music: a diegetic salon combo reconstructing the dead city's courtly 3/4 evenings. A♭ major, 88 BPM, 3/4. Calm is the ballroom at low light — felt-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 L1 is the dance developing a LIMP: beat 3 of each bar doubled by a low vault-boom and the first stone crack-ticks, the swing turned wary; danger L2 is COLLAPSE, adding downbeat booms, crack-ticks scattered across the barline, and an uneasy celesta upper voice — rockfall joining the dance, not horror. 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 lead brushes 7th/9th color, and the danger section sharpens that color into anxiety — every chromatic tone is a functional jazz color, never accidental atmosphere.
