# Caves Vaulted (The Patient Dark) — Take B, A-dorian felt-piano cave

`caves-vaulted-v3b` — levels: `calm.mp3` · `activity1.mp3` · `activity2.mp3` · `danger1.mp3` · `danger2.mp3`

Take B is the bolder, more fully-arranged reading of the spacious house voice: the stylistic risk is making a FELT PIANO the bed's defining voice. Where a conservative take leaves the hollow fifths to sustained pads, this scores the patient dark as a lone pianist in a cathedral-sized cave — root+fifth dyads struck on felt piano and left to ring into a low darkDrone foundation, the sub heartbeat once per bar, and the dorian major sixth (F#) opening in the pad voicing once per phrase (the open door). Fully diatonic A dorian throughout — dark is allowed, spooky is not: no raised 7th, no b2, no tritone, and no chromatic intent. The VAULT motif (root→fifth→octave, 6–5 settle) is stated on the caveCelesta from A-3, then developed: statement → falling response → the statement lifted to the dorian IV (D, brightened by F#) → cadence and the only full arrival. Activity L1 (ch4–5) is the celesta statement plus ONE stereo echo trail, reading on its own over the bed. Activity L2 (ch6–7) adds genuinely NEW material, not the line louder: the SECOND stereo echo trail (the twin trails the rejected theme is remembered for, now fully realized) AND a low felt-piano counter-voice walking under the celesta's reaches — the pianist's left hand answering the right, so the space opens underneath. Danger keeps the same patient 66 BPM and stays diatonic, building dread by proximity: danger L1 (ch8–9) is the mountain muttering — deepBooms spaced far apart over a low drone — and danger L2 (ch10–11) compresses the spacing into nearer booms with crack-tick drips that quicken toward the wrap, rising water/rockfall closing in. No looped noise bed anywhere: the cave air is the felt-piano fifths ringing and the struck crack drips, never a sustained hiss.
