This is to be used for commercial electronic music productions. My other music compositions, including game soundtracks, will continue to use the name Kaleb Grace.

Two Tortoisone tracks will be published in the coming months. One of them, “Shuriken”, has already received a nomination for Best Music Composition at the 2012 Cogswell Fusion Awards. Out of 16 entries, it placed in the top three. Coincidentally, the winner of said award, adubthedrummer, is the co-producer for my other track, “Screaming”.

In other news, I have two different tracks which are also to be released in the coming months, though as Kaleb Grace. These are “Creeping Forest Stream” (improved from last time), and “Cloudy” (a very short piece).

As soon as any of these tracks are finished and available for download, I will let you know!

I am also hosting a mirror of the Clark & Dagger album in lossless quality, should there be any problem with Bandcamp.

This is the original score for Clark & Dagger, a student-developed stealth co-op game which you can get for free on Windows or Mac OS X.

Track List:

1. Spy’s Ambience
2. Digital Ghost
3. C&D Mission Fail
4. C&D Mission Complete

Notes:

I got involved with the “Spy & Hacker” project pitched by Brody Brooks to the Game Development Club at Cogswell Polytechnical College, which would later be called Clark & Dagger. I was in charge of the game’s audio and later brought on Cameron McLaughlin to co-compose the music and Miles Philippe to help with sound effects. It was a challenge to write something that conformed specifically to the vision of the game’s director (Brody), but it seems we were successful in the end.

That said, I take full responsibility for the quality of the mixing (or lack thereof). This game was to be submitted into the IGF student competition a few months back, so we had a deadline, and we were working on the arrangement aspects pretty much up to the final hour. There was no time for tweaks or polish; neither back then nor over the following few months (or I could have just been lazy). Cameron wasn’t hot on releasing such raw tracks, but he kindly let me have my way.

“Spy’s Ambience” is the main theme (bgm1), but came about partly by accident. When I started writing the music for this game, Brody had not heard any of my past work. Cameron came aboard and we started work on Digital Ghost, which was planned to be the main theme. While Brody provided a clear idea of the style he wanted, it was hard to reconcile that with our own skill levels and personal styles. Eventually I decided to have him listen to my past works so he could better understand what I can do. He listened to Space Ambience from ICHYP? and had a “Eureka!” moment. Long story short, he had Cameron add percussion and additional arrangement, and there you have it! I feel the track title fits the female spy character, Dagger.

“Digital Ghost” is the tutorial music (bgm2). This was originally planned to be the main theme, and is what we spent over a month of our time working on. After Spy’s Ambience was created, it seemed we would no longer need this track, but thankfully it found a home in the tutorial. Afterwards, I performed some additional arrangement on the last day to more closely match the instrumentation of Spy’s Ambience. The title of this track is named after a synth preset we had used in an older version of this track, but is no longer to be found~ Also, I feel it fits the male hacker character, Clark.

The two other tracks (“C&D Mission Fail” and “C&D Mission Complete”) are merely short jingles.

Credits:

All music by Kaleb Grace & Cameron McLaughlin.

“Spy’s Ambience” (bgm1)
- Arranged by Cameron McLaughlin
- Originally composed by Kaleb Grace as “Space Ambience” from I Can Has Your Planet?

“Digital Ghost” (bgm2), “C&D Mission Fail”, “C&D Mission Complete”
- Composed by Kaleb Grace & Cameron McLaughlin

All track names by Kaleb Grace.

Cover art shooped by Kaleb Grace using assets created by one or more of the following people: Amelia Davis, Gaz DeWolfe, Cassandra Matteis, Brody Brooks, and Jessica Bower. In particular, Amelia Davis was responsible for the character designs, and possibly more.

Special Thanks to:

Cameron, for working with me on this project and showing me some cool new things (such as the Hang “drum”, which sadly didn’t make it into the soundtrack due to stylistic reasons).

Brody, for directing/producing the game and hosting development meetings at his and Tobiah’s house. If it weren’t for Brody, the time I spent writing this music probably would have gone into watching more episodes of 24.

Miles, for doing sound effects… so I didn’t have to!

The Clark & Dagger team (Forrest Spade, Aaron Weingarten, and everyone else I already mentioned), Game Dev Club, and Cogswell College. Word up!

Clark & Dagger Original Score by Kaleb Grace & Cameron McLaughlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Catalogue #:

KRG2012a

The music was tricky to write because Brody (the lead developer) was looking for a specific style and we had to adapt our methods to try to achieve it. Near the end, Brody listened to my track “Space Ambience” from I Can Has Your Planet? and decided he wanted a modified version of it as the main level theme for this game, so I obliged and Cameron went to work on the drums and arrangement. The track Cameron and I were working on beforehand (which went through multiple versions) ended up as the tutorial theme.

I want to release a soundtrack, but there may be further work done on the music in the near future, so this can be addressed once everything has settled. The game has been entered into the Independent Games Festival 2012 Student Competition, so we have potential for a wide audience and “prizes priz-izes”. For more information about the game, read the Cogswell blog post.

Worlds Apart is the second film by Cogswell’s Project X. It is a 3D animated short. Jeremiah Dias (pictured left) and Cameron McLaughlin (pictured right) composed music for it, and I helped a bit on the technical side during the last few months of production. Read the article linked in the following paragraph to learn more. Regarding when I’ll have some work to show from this film, there’s a mandatory veil of secrecy surrounding it, and the situation recently became a lot more complicated. All I can do now is wait and hope.

The Cogswell blog (or “Cogswell Confessions”) was something I wrote for over the summer as part of my job as a student worker. The blog is currently on hiatus, but you can still read the articles I wrote:

1. A dire trend in today’s game music (& how you can fix it)
2. My first video game soundtrack
3. Working on the music of Worlds Apart
4. Scoring with musical genres and themes

In case any of these links go down, I have an archive of the blog articles.

“Creeping Forest Stream” is a WIP (work-in-progress) stand-alone music track I shared on Facebook and SoundCloud a couple months ago. When it’s in a proper “Demo” state, I’ll post it on my website. For now, follow the link on the title to hear my current progress.

Clark & Dagger is a game in development by a group of Cogswell students. I took charge of the music aspect, and have enlisted Cameron McLaughlin for collaboration, which I’m finding to be very beneficial. I can’t say anything else past plans and speculation right now, so I will simply return with music when the time is right. ;}

As a note, “Fusion Mix” is essentially the same as the original version from my Admission Portfolio but looped/faded. Nevertheless, it’s available from the preceding link.

Jum Alpha Laboratory (Fusion Mix) by Kaleb Grace is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Catalogue #:

KRG2011b

I am also hosting a mirror of the ICHYP? album in lossless quality, should there be any problem with Bandcamp.

This is a two-track score created for I Can Has Your Planet?, a product of Global Game Jam 2011.

Track List:

1. ICHYP? Main Theme
2. Space Ambience

Notes:

I was tasked with creating the music and gathering other audio assets during the 48 hours my team had to create the game. Due to helping with the design of the game proper, as well as food, sleep, and other diversions, the time I actually spent on the music was probably around 12 hours. The music itself was created entirely in Logic 7 on a old PowerPC Mac at my school. No state-of-the-art hardware or software here.

To maintain the integrity of the original sound version, the changes made for this album are reduced to the bare necessities. Both tracks have been gained/compressed to increase the volume. They have also been looped/faded for smoother listening. Otherwise, they should sound exactly like they do in the game, imperfections and all.

Credits:

Music by Kaleb Grace.

Illustration provided by Team “Four Refugees & Their Cat”.

I Can Has Your Planet? Original Score by Kaleb Grace is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Catalogue #:

KRG2011a

1. SoAm Title Concept
2. Jum Alpha Laboratory
3. A Nomad Calloused by the Years

These stand as my earliest solo music compositions to be completed. I hope that in the future, I can look back at these to see how far I’ve come!

Cogswell Admission Portfolio by Kaleb Grace is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Catalogue #:

KRG2010a