Three Chess Songs for What the Game Actually Feels Like
Not the trophies. Not the theory. The thinking. The losing. The coming back. Every Move Counts, One Move To Mastery, One Move Closer — original chess songs by KimDem.
There is no music written from inside serious competitive chess. There are chess-themed pieces, soundtracks that accompany chess scenes in film, ambient playlists marketed to players who study. But music written by a rated player, from the actual experience of sitting across the board in a closed FM/IM tournament, of losing eighty-two rating points in nine games, of replaying a position at midnight in a hotel room in Budapest until you find the move you missed on move thirty-one: that does not exist.
Until now. The three English-language songs in the Pieces collection are an attempt at exactly that. Written by Kerim Demirkol, FIDE Arena International Chess Master, across four years of competitive chess in seven countries. Not about chess. From inside it.
Every Move Counts
The first song and the clearest statement. It opens with a first game and ends with an outro that is also the closing argument of the memoir it accompanies: Calculate. Commit. Continue. The chorus does not celebrate winning. It celebrates what you learn about yourself when winning is not available.
The bridge is the line the memoir is built around: “The grandmaster I never became was worth every single loss.” It appears in the song before it appears on the page. Music reached it first.
One Move To Mastery
The second song is for the plateau. Every chess player knows what a plateau is. You study openings. You grind tactics. Your rating moves up steadily, then stops. You do the same work and get the same results. Then one day you see something you have never seen, and the game opens up again. One Move To Mastery is written for the stretch of time before that moment, when you cannot see it coming and you have to trust that the work is accumulating anyway.
The outro closes on three words: “It was always mastery.” The final chorus tells you that every loss you absorbed was already part of the answer. You were building all along. You could not see it from inside the plateau.
One Move Closer
The third song takes a different angle. It is lighter. More forgiving. Written directly to young players who blunder their queen and think about quitting. Every youth chess coach knows this conversation. Every chess parent has had it. One Move Closer is the song for the kid who hit reset and came back.
The bridge lands the philosophy cleanly: “The grandmaster I’ll never be, and that’s okay, ’cause now I see, it’s all about the subtle shift. Progress is the only gift.” Chess parents and coaches: this one is for your players. Put it in the car on the way home from a tournament they lost.
Who made this and why it matters
Kerim Demirkol is sixteen years old. He has played competitive chess across seven countries, earned the FIDE Arena International Chess Master title, studied under fifteen coaches, and accumulated more than 675 rated classical games since he began at age twelve. He is also the Oceanman 10KM Champion, a certified personal trainer, and a Borlaug Scholar named by the World Food Prize Foundation.
The chess songs are one part of a larger project: a memoir called The Grandmaster I Never Became, which follows his pursuit of the Grandmaster title across four years and why falling short of it was the most clarifying thing that ever happened to him. The music is not a side project. It is a parallel document that says some of the same things in a different register, and reaches some things the prose is still working toward.
Written at 16. Lived from 12. A memoir about ambition, burnout, and rebuilding after failing at the thing you wanted most. Seven countries. Fifteen coaches. 675 rated games. Launching August 2026 on Amazon.
Every Move Counts · One Move To Mastery · One Move Closer. Lossless WAV, $1.50 each. Written and produced by KimDem. Available on Bandcamp — yours to keep, forever.
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