Mastering Archives – Jim Kulakowski

Mr. Mine Gameplay Soundtrack

Developer: Austin Oblouk, Playsaurus
Release Date: October 21st 2021
Platforms: PC, Steam, Mobile (Late 2021)
Website: https://mrmine.com/

Mr. Mine is an idle, mining game created by Austin Oblouk of Playsaurus. In the game, the player controls a mining operation that includes a drilling machine, mine workers, an oil rig and other assets that contribute to one drilling further toward the Earth’s core. Along the way, one may collect raw materials to enhance equipment, hire mining managers, collect treasures, encounter enemies, and more.

Playsaurus hired me to compose a unique soundtrack for their extensive gameplay. The music needed to be ambient enough to sit in the background, but also continually loop without becoming an ear sore to the listener. After nearly a dozen iterations, I delivered a 5+ minute, pleasing, harmonious and ambient soundtrack. Hopefully it’s one for the ages.

Special thanks to Austin at Playsaurus for providing me the opportunity to work on this game. It was a blast and I cannot wait to work on the next one!

(Content below is from the developer)

Description

Get rich or die mining! Idle your way through the mines, unearth treasures, and discover what great mysteries lie in the depths below!

Features

Over 100+ drill upgrades to unlock as you progress through the mines!

Many unique buildings to encounter with special mechanics to help you dig faster and get further!

Lots of quests to complete and achievements to unlock

Hire scientists to find rare relics to help you progress further.

Many Secret encounters. Can you find them all?
Chests with hidden upgrades.
Unlock new features the deeper you go. Discover them all!
Afraid of federally induced inflation? Mine tons of precious gems and ores to make your billions! Klang Gang!
Updated artwork & rebalanced progression from the original!

Screenshots

Images are the property of Playsaurus Inc.

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Path and Present Podcast

Client: Baraka Blue
Website: patreon.com/pathandpresent
Retailers: Free on iTunes, Soundcloud
Released: October 2016 – December 2018
Description: Path and Present is a long form conversation hosted by poet, emcee, and teaching artist Baraka Blue with friends and guests including artists, musicians, authors, and scholars to collectively explore what it means to walk a path of awakening and spiritual discernment in the modern world. Topics covered include spirituality/religion/metaphysics, community, art/music, psychology, social justice, Islam and Muslims in the West, and earth stewardship.

**Path & Present** Is a community endeavor produced for the sake of sharing the stories of our communities and amplifying the forces of positivity and goodness in the universe. It is made possible through community support. Enjoy Path and Present Podcast? Now you can become a supporter/patron at Patreon.

Contribution:

Audio Engineer/Editor + Audio Mastering

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Path and Present, which is the property of its owner.

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Rapidweaver 7

Client: Realmac Software
Website: realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/

Released: May 2016
RapidWeaver is an all-in-one Mac app that enables anyone to build websites without writing a line HTML. Build anything from a small personal site, to an online commerce store. RapidWeaver is expandable and powerful enough to grow with you and your Business.

RapidWeaver has been around for over 12 years and has been in constant development during that time. RapidWeaver also has one of the most active and thriving third party community

Contribution:

Composed custom register/unregister sound effects

From the developer: “This is possibly one of my favourite fun new features in RapidWeaver.”

RapidWeaver Features

Build anything
Build a blog, a portfolio, a website for your new business or even an online store. Anything is possible.

No Code Required
Don’t know HTML? Don’t worry. You can build an entire site without writing a single line of code.

Theme Based
RapidWaver is theme based meaning you can have a great looking site up and running in minutes.

Smart Publishing
Publishing your site has never been easier: RapidWeaver cleverly only uploads files that have changed.

Browser Compatible
All the code that RapidWeaver publishes looks great in your favourite browsers – even Internet Explorer.

SEO Optimised
RapidWeaver generates code that search engines love, and makes sure search engines know about your website.

Mix Code & Rich Text
Your content lives happily alongside any HTML code you need to use. Just paste in the code and you’re good to go.

Extend with Addons
With almost 1,000 addons available for RapidWeaver, including everything from responsive themes, to CMS and eCommerce solutions. there’s literally nothing you can’t do with RapidWeaver!

Responsive Preview
The new themes in RapidWeaver are all responsive, and to help you imagine your site at different sizes you can resize the preview area to any width you like. There’s even handy presets for iPhone and iPad widths.

Re-usable Snippets
The snippets window lets you save frequently-used pieces of code and easily re-use them on multiple projects.

Versions & Autosave
Ever found yourself needing to quickly revert a change to your website? Thanks to Versions and Autosave, it’s never been easier. For the first time, RapidWeaver allows you to browse versions of your projects.

Theme and Plugin SDKs
Developers rejoice: we publish our SDKs on GitHub so you too can build incredible addons for RapidWeaver.

Free Training Videos & Podcast
We publish free training videos and a weekly yo help you make the best websites possible.

What’s New in RapidWeaver 7?

Overhauled FTP Engine
Super fast, super reliable FTP Engine (No, really it is this time!)

FTP Path Browser
You can now visually browser your FTP server to pick a location to publish too!

Built-in Web Server
Allows you to preview your entire site locally in a browser without having to export it

SEO Health Check
RapidWeaver will analyse your site and will highlight steps you can take to improve SEO.

Banner Images
In themes that support this new feature, you can now add a custom banner image to your site, and customise it on each page. Themes that support this feature also include optimal image dimensions to help you size images.

4 Responsive New Themes
Designed by Realmac, Elixir Graphics, MultiThemes, and Yuzool!

New, modern OS X sidebar
With translucency, that shows all your pages, resources and settings in one location.

Portable Documents
You can now choose to store resources inside your RapidWeaver document, enabling you to take the project between multiple Macs.

Multiple Publishing Locations
If you need to publish projects to multiple locations, you can set these up in your project, and choose the server when publishing. RapidWeaver’s smart publishing will also keep track of changes across multiple publishing locations.

Local Publishing
The “Export” feature is something we’ve always felt should be considered a way of publishing your site, and now it is!

Project Backup
RapidWeaver can optionally create a ZIP file of your project, and upload it to your server when publishing. The file is added to a “secret” location on your server, meaning that while it is downloadable by anyone who knows the cryptic web address, it’s tricky to guess that web address.

User-selectable Addons Folder
Need to save your addons in a custom location? RapidWeaver 7 allows you to do this, and will move your addons for you! Great if you’re working between machines.

Minified Javascript and CSS
RapidWeaver can now optimise your CSS and Javascript by minifying it. Previously, RapidWeaver would remove some whitespace, but this time we’re actually optimising it to be as quick to download and apply to your pages as possible.

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The SockKids

Client: Trailer To The Stars | Michael Sullivan
Released: March 2016

(From the producer)
In this multi-colored illustrated and animated children’s video and book series, The SockKids, readers and viewers follow the Socker family through many exciting adventures. The SockKids teach about how bullying hurts everyone to understanding why some children are sometimes afraid to go to school to showing our differences are what make us each special. The uniqueness of The SockKids is displayed through their many colors and wonderful personalities as they sometimes time travel through the spin cycle of a washer. It is during these journeys the SockKids champion all children and all cultures.

Perhaps you’ll wonder where your missing sock has gone. You’ll have to look no where else but here — as your socks could be traveling with the SockKids on a cool adventure!

Children and their parents will be drawn to the diversity of the family and the universal and timeless lessons they teach: don’t be afraid of new experiences; treat others as you would like to be treated, and of course, beware of the spin cycle!

Contribution:

Composed, recorded and produced underscore music (not opening music), sourced sound effects (foley artist), mixed and mastered final audio for the “The SockKids Learn How to Prevent Bullying” episode, produced by Trailer To The Stars.

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Laundry Day

Client: Daniel Macnaugton

“Laundry Day” is a short story written by Daniel Macnaughton, based on the characters featured in his BBC award winning audio program, “Above and Below”.

Laundry Day Short

Sound design, music supervision, mixing, and mastering by Jim Kulakowski.

Script

Laundry Day

(An Above and Below Editing Short)

AMBIENCE: A BUSTLING STREET CORNER LOCATED SOMEWHERE IN THE TEEMING FUTURISTIC METROPOLIS KNOWN AS MIDNIGHT CITY. IN THE BACKGROUND, WE CAN HEAR THE GENTLE HUM OF HOVER-CAR’S SPEEDING AWAY FROM THE SKIES ABOVE.

SOUND EFFECTS: WALKING DOWN THE SREET IS MARCUS REACHMAN (A HARDENED AND SOMEWHAT CYNICAL PRIVATE DETECTIVE), ACCOMPANIED BY ALISS (A CHEERFUL AND INCREDIBLY ECCENTRIC FEMALE ANDROID).

Aliss: Are we there yet?

Marcus: Just a little further…

Aliss: Marcus, you’ve been saying that for almost twenty minutes now! Just where exactly are you taking me anyway?

SOUND EFFECTS: MARCUS COMES TO A STOP.

Marcus: Ah! Here we are! “Master Makato’s Launderette and Drycleaners’.

Aliss: Launderette?

Marcus: Sure! If your gonna learn how to live like a human being your gonna have to learn how to do your laundry sometime, right? Come on.

SOUND EFFECTS: MARCUS PUSHES OPEN THE DOOR INSTANTLY SOUNDING A SHOPKEEPERS BELL FROM UP ABOVE HIM AS MARCUS AND ALISS STEP INTO THE LAUNDRETTE.

AMBIENCE: A QUIET LAUNDRETTE. IN THE BACKGROUND, WE CAN HEAR THE DULL HUM OF VARIOUS ACTIVE WASHING MACHINES.

SOUND EFFECTS: MARCUS AND ALISS WALK SLOWLY THROUGH THE LAUNDRETTE.

Marcus: (Calling) Hello? Mister Makato? You around?

SOUND EFFECTS: FROM THE BACK OF THE LAUNDRETTE, WE CAN SUDDENLEY HEAR MASTER MAKATO, AN ELDERLY ASIAN MAN, HURRYING TOWARDS THEM.

Master Makato: Ah, Dennis! So good to see you! So good! So fine! I trust you are well?

Marcus: I’m surviving. This is Aliss by the way. She’s living with me now. Say…you mind if we use one of your washers for a while? Gotta do some laundry.

Master Makato: Not at all! Go right ahead! (To Aliss, Conspiratorial Whisper) I owe Dennis big favor! I hire him long time ago as private detective to find long lost daughter. Now I let him use fabric softer for free whenever he likes. He is a good boy!

SOUND EFFECTS: MASTER MAKATO SHUFFLES OFF TO THE BACK OF THE LAUNDRY.

Aliss: Did he just call you Dennis…?

Marcus: Yeah. First time we ran into each other, the old geezer just started calling me Dennis so I guess I just ended up going along with it. Besides… I think the guys starting to go a little cuckoo.

Aliss: What makes you say that?

Marcus: Well…for starters…that “long lost daughter” of his that he hired me to find was actually turned out to be a pen that he ended up losing behind the cash register last week. Not that I’m complaining. Easiest forty bucks I ever made.

SOUND EFFECTS: ALISS MOVES OVER TO A WASHING MACHINE AS SHE OPENS IT’S DOOR, POKING A FEW BUTTONS ON IT’S FRONT PANEL.

Aliss: So…this is a washing machine? It doesn’t seem very exciting.

Marcus: Just hold my stuff, will ya? Right, let’s start off by teaching you how to tell your basic fabrics from your delicates….

SOUND EFFECTS: MARCUS GRADUALLY TO PILE HIS CLOTHES INTO THE WASHING MACHINE.

Aliss: Marcus…when are you going to find yourself another case? You do realise it’s been three whole weeks since that whole Michael Rose? you know. When are we going to get back to all the exciting adventures? Solving crimes and catching bad guys? When are we going to go back to doing something dangerous?

Marcus: Hey, don’t knock laundry day! Laundry day just so happens to be my favourite part of the week!

Aliss: I refuse to believe this.

Marcus: It’s true! For one precious hour a week…I get to go out of the apartment, travel across the block, come to this laundrette and sit down with a good book for exactly one hour. One hour where I never have to worry about getting knocked around by gangsters or being thrown out of skyscrapers…or whatever the hell I have to do to make a quick buck in this town. Peace and quiet…now that’s what I like.

SOUND EFFECTS: Suddenley, the doors burst open as a teenageD CRIMINAL armed with an incredibly outlandish energy weapon (SKEEVER) dashes into the laundrette.

Skeever: Alright, skinwipes! Nobody move! This is a hold up and Skeever’s packin heat, ya dig?

Aliss: You were saying?

SOUND EFFECTS: NOTICING MARCUS AND ALISS, SKEETER RUNS OVER TO THE TWO OF THEM AS HE COCKS HIS WEAPON THREATENINGLY.

Skeever: Yo! You two! Hand over your wallets!

Marcus: Easy buddy. No need to get over-excited…

SOUND EFFECTS: REACHING SLOWLY INSIDE HIS COAT POCKET, MARCUS TAKES OUT FIVE DOLLARS.

Marcus: Here’s. Have five dollars. Take it. Paint the town red.

Skeether: What about you, baby? You holdin any more cash for Skeever?

Marcus: She doesn’t have any money.

Aliss: I have some money!

Marcus: No, you don’t.

Aliss: Yes I do. Lots!

Skeever: Give it to me!

SOUND EFFECTS: ALISS HANDS MARCUS’S WALLET OVER TO SKEEVER.

Marcus: (Through Gritted Teeth) Well, that’s certainly the last time I give you my wallet…

Aliss: But he asked so nicely!

Marcus: Nicely? How is that nicely? Besides, irregardless of the fact of how nice he was…

Skeever: Actually friend, I think the word your really looking for there is “regardless”.

Marcus: Excuse me?

Skeever: Ya see, contrary to popular belief… “irregardless” isn’t actually a real word! The word your actually looking for is “regardless”. “Irregardless” uses a rather iriksome double negative of prefix and suffix that’s actually discounted scholar’s from considering as a real word.

Marcus: (Sarcastically) How interesting! (Aside) Aliss, pass me that bottle of detergent, will ya?

SOUND EFFECTS: ALISS PASSES MARCUS THE BOTTLE OF DETERGENT.

Skeever: Furthermore, it’s also been discounted by a wide variety of linguistic scholars that-

SOUND EFFECTS: SUDDENLEY, MARCUS KNOCKS SKEEVER CLEANLY OVER THE HEAD WITH THER DETERGENT, CAUSING THE TEENAGER TO TOPPLE OVER ONTO THE FLOOR IN A GROANING, MESSY HEAP.

Skeever: Aww! My head! You hit me on the head, man!

Marcus: What the hell’s the matter with you? Get out of here! And leave the wallet. Actually…you know what? Keep it. Keep the wallet. Not like there was anything left in it anyway.

Skeever: Thank’s, man! I’m sorry, man! You have yourself a nice day now, man!

SOUND EFFECTS: WITH A COWARDLY WHIMPER, SKEEVER BOLTS OUT OF THE LAUNDRETTE, SLAMMING THE DOOR SHUT BEHIND HIM.

Aliss: On second thoughts, maybe laundry day shouldn’t prove to be quite so boring after all…

Marcus: One day. One day I’ll finally manage to pass an evening without running into someone who doesn’t want to kill me.

Aliss: Oh, shush. Now…you were saying something about dividing fabrics and delicates?

AMBIENCE: SHARP FADE OUT.

END.

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Lion Sage Podcast

Client: Lion Sage Podcast
Released: December 2013 – May 2014 (Podcast ended)

Lion Sage was an online resource dedicated to helping young professionals build a powerful, professional brand. A weekly Podcast and Blog were hosted by founder, Arfan Qureshi.

Contribution

Produced musical segment transitions. Also, mixed and mastered pre-recorded audio provided by the client into release-ready episodes.

Lion Sage Podcast – Episode 18

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Red Hula Girl

Client: Jennifer Yeung/E-Horse Music
Retailers: SoundCloud

Publisher: E-Horse Music
Released: July 2012

6 years it took to complete this project. The Red Hula Girl is unrequited and no more willing to give. A tapestry woven from old pieces of furs and hides; ill-fitting from the start. They feel like sand paper. Ouch. In one breath she says, “I will be the red hula girl in your tree” yet simultaneously realizes she’s “jammed the pieces together till [her] fingers bled – it was something unthinkable.” To the West she gazes. A silent salute. A nod. A farewell: “Done. Finished. Complete. I am no longer the red hula girl in your tree.”

“Mission to render
Your sister and me, her in
car and me in tree…”

This album is for my dear friend, Jim Kulakowski. For your kindness, brilliance, and generosity in helping me finish this project, I am eternally grateful
~ Jennifer Yeung

Contribution

Produced, mixed and mastered entire album except…

“Ode To Ryan,” “In Celebration Of A New Synapse,”
“Geisha” (produced by Jennifer Yeung)

Other Contributions

Keyboard/Synth: Red Hula Girl, Anyway, Slowly, Moon, Red Hula Girl II
Drum Programming: Emperor’s Daughter, Gemini, Slowly, Moon, Red Hula Girl II
Guitar: Emperor’s Daughter, Slowly, Pretty Babies

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