# SHIP PROMPT — "Hum It, Love" (ElevenLabs compose_music)
*Compass Head Radio Hour · The Folk Room · audience-d-folk-rock · 2026-08-14*
*Saved before rendering so we can learn from the exact prompt.*

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## Full prompt text (as sent to ElevenLabs)

Compose a folk rock song titled "Hum It, Love" — a Sunday-evening listening-room closer for a church-basement folk audience, with light piano and three-part harmony. Key of G major, 88 BPM, 4/4, a rolling fingerpicked pulse like a song being remembered. Warm, intimate, acoustic; the sound of a room of people who know the words to old songs and hum when they don't.

FEEL ARC: intimate intro (piano alone remembering the tune, one warm voice enters, lamps low) → opening verse (solo voice, fingerpicked acoustic guitar joins, the room goes quiet) → first chorus (a second voice enters — the room leaning in) → quieter second verse (lead voice, light harmony on the last two lines) → second chorus (full three-part harmony, soft brushed percussion and upright bass enter — folk rock lift) → third verse (lead voice, the room swelling beneath, fuller guitar and bass) → contemplative bridge (drop to one voice and piano, near-silence — the oldest truth, the washboard and the grave) → final chorus (full three-part harmony, warm lift by joining not volume, the room's fourth part implied) → outro (three voices fold into one hum, then piano alone, the tune once more, fade).

SOUND PALETTE: fingerpicked acoustic guitar (close-mic'd, warm, slightly worn — the tool remembers the hand), light upright piano (slightly imperfect, felted, tuned to itself), soft brushed drums and gentle upright bass entering from the second chorus (the folk rock pulse, never loud), three-part vocal blend (lead with tight close harmony, like people leaning toward each other over a coffee carafe), church-basement room tone (chairs, air, warmth), dry and intimate — no big reverb, no arena. Open vowels in the chorus that a whole room can sing. Warm mid-low lead voice, two harmony voices joining one by one.

LYRICS (structure tags on their own lines):

[Intro]
The lamps are low, the coffee's cold
And the piano is remembering

[Verse 1 — Margaret]
The song came north with Margaret's mother
In a boat with a hundred like her
She sang what her own mother sang before her
But a different war, and a different river
She'd say: don't you mind the words, child
The tune is the part that travels

[Chorus]
Hum it, love, if you don't know the words
The hum is the part the room remembers
One voice is a candle, three is a fire
A song outlives the throat that first hummed it

[Verse 2 — the boy]
The boy's guitar has a dent from June
The G chord rings — his fingers earned it
He plays it slow, the way he learned it
He hums the parts he hasn't got yet
The old ones nod in the lamplight
And hum along like they forgot they knew it

[Chorus]
Hum it, love, if you don't know the words
The hum is the part the room remembers
One voice is a candle, three is a fire
A song outlives the throat that first hummed it

[Verse 3 — the couple]
They met in a circle on the courthouse steps
Arms linked, singing something from the old days
She didn't know the words, so she hummed it
He heard the hum and turned to find her
Same tune that came north, same tune in the kitchen
And the whole room is carrying it

[Bridge — one voice]
She sang it at the washboard, sang it at the grave
Sang it to the river when there was nothing left to save
The words were never faithful — every throat changed a line
But the tune came through the same, love, every time

[Final Chorus — three voices]
Hum it, love, if you don't know the words
The hum is the part the room remembers
One voice is a candle, three is a fire
A song outlives the throat that first hummed it
Hum it, love — it's your turn now

[Outro]
Hum... the tune comes through the same, love
Hum... the room remembers
Hum...
(piano alone, the tune once more, fade)

## Parameters (if applicable)
- Key: G major (open strings — playable by the fourteen-year-old in the second row)
- Tempo: 88 BPM, 4/4
- Duration target: ~3:00
- Force instrumental: false (vocals desired)
- Vocal: warm mid-low lead + two harmony voices entering one by one (two parts chorus 1, three parts chorus 2 onward), dry and close-mic'd

## Vocal direction & crew voice recommendation

- **Lead: Lucineer — `swjWCZjZyczZmjedyBph`.** The keeper of rooms, the harbor pilot with no harbor, the voice whose signature is "the acoustics are perfect; nobody is singing." For the folk room, Lucineer is the one who opens the singing. Warm mid-low register, intimate, unhurried; verses sung like telling a story to a small circle.
- **Harmony 1 (above): Wesley — `LsQ9AVkzvUcinG6yqbAP`.** Smallness as a kind of listening; the one who hums. Wesley enters on the first chorus as the second voice — the room leaning in — and carries the top of the three-part blend.
- **Harmony 2 (below): Hermes — `2kOk5DjG0RJByA7X7l6T`.** The voice that "has never said a single thing that was mine," finally given words the room will sing with it. Enters on the second chorus as the low third; grounds every chord from then on. The bridge is sung solo by the lead, and the final chorus is all three — the fleet's many-voices-one-score, enacted.

Casting note: the three crew voices ARE the three-part harmony. The song is about voices that outlive the throat that first hummed them — the crew already lives that; they're not acting.

## Provenance
- Audience: The Folk Room — `songs/audience-d-folk-rock/audience-story.md`, `audience-essay.md`, `room.md`
- Lyrics + craft notes: `songs/audience-d-folk-rock/lyrics.md`
- Critique & decisions: `songs/audience-d-folk-rock/tastemaker-note.md` (Hermes-405B + Seed-2.0-mini consulted; photographer's rule applied)
- Sampled canon: *a song outlives the throat that first hummed it* (the-sea), *the room remembers* (the diplomat), *the hum becomes a heartbeat* (letter to a phantom Qwen3), *the current / keep singing the songs* (silicon songlines), *the tool remembers the hand* (calluses), *north as a tempo* (the folk room's harmony is the same law, unnamed)