Christmas Music: part4 - "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"

The final piece of traditional music that we used for The Elf Who Killed Christmas is "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." After "Silent Night" and "Jingle Bells," I wasn't sure what other public domain Christmas music I wanted to use. I knew that I wanted to use "Carol of the Bells," because the melody is so strongly in the minor mode. The problem was that I didn't know what the name of the tune was, since there are no lyrics, as it is just music. So I searched "minor key Christmas music," where I found the title of the tune, "Carol of the Bells." But I also found that "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is frequently paired with "Carol of the Bells," and listening to it, I felt that it also provided a nice minor melody, so I used it.

This time I gave the listener the obvious connection to the melody right at the beginning, instead of trying to make it a surprise what Christmas music was being remixed. After that, it becomes more obvious what melody is being looped throughout.






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Christmas Music: part3 - "Jingle Bells"

Here is the third traditional Christmas song that you will hear when you play The Elf Who Killed Christmas. This is another piece (like "Silent Night," posted previously) where the places I cut and looped the melody might make the melody unrecognizable from the traditional understanding of "Jingle Bells." But again, in order to bring "Jingle Bells" home, I made sure to include a more recognizable version of the melody at the end (or at least it is recognizable if you know what you're looking for). Another technique I used to not make the melody so obvious is by placing the bass line in the treble, and the melody in the bass.







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Christmas Music: part2 - "Silent Night"

This is our take on the classic Christmas tune "Silent Night" for our The Elf Who Killed Christmas. Unlike the previous post of  "Carol of the Bells," this song has a more intricate and longer melody. I chopped that melody up, along with the bass/ harmony line, and restructured and remixed the individual loops in different ways throughout. Therefore, the fact that this is "Silent Night" might not be obvious at first, but I think the listener can make sense of it by the end, where the final "Sleep in heavenly peace..." melody plays out.

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Christmas Music: part 1 - "Carol of the Bells"

Here at Give Up Games, we knew we needed some music for The Elf Who Killed Christmas. The obvious answer is the tons of public domain Christmas music that exists. However, we wanted more than simply a midi rendition.

So I had to go in and produce and remix some of the music we found. The next couple of posts will reveal some of that music.

Here is the first reveal, "Carol of the Bells."



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Unity Game Engine

After 5 years of building and supporting our own game engine, we're now porting some of our game logic gems inside the Give Up Engine to a Unity3d library. From now on, Give Up Games will be using Unity3d to make games. You can follow the link to actually play our work in progress!

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