Alvin & the Chipmunks (Chopped & Screwed)
We probably all remember speeding up our favorite records so they’d sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. But it never occurred to me to do the opposite: If you slow down an Alvin and the Chipmunks record just right, you can hear the human voice actors singing very slowly in their normal voices.
Here’s the Chipmunks’ Christmas song that we’ve all heard a billion times before, and here’s what you would have heard if you swung by the studio when it was being recorded.
Tron Javolta wrote:
Jesus… “Nightmare Edition” is right.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 11:25 am | Permalink
atomic elroy wrote:
WOW! listen to the care taken by the singers to enunciate the words, so they will sound roght wqhen played back at high speed. This is a great example of recording technique from back when audio recording was a science!
hoppy holidaze!
AE
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:07 pm | Permalink
lee wrote:
Patton Oswalt did this as a bit on his last comedy record.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:16 pm | Permalink
Sorter42o wrote:
Awesome! I still have this on vinyl and listen to it every year. I can’t believe that I haven’t tried doing this before.
Thanks
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:18 pm | Permalink
tovaac wrote:
You got this from http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ . Unless you’re one of Panic’s people, I think you should give credit where credit is due.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:19 pm | Permalink
tovaac wrote:
Note: I didn’t see the via link. My apologies, I jumped to conclusions.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:28 pm | Permalink
jameso wrote:
Hilarious. Patton Oswalt did a really funny bit about this a couple of years ago as part of his “Feeling Kinda Patton” material. There’s a crappy quality youtube vid of it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R69_mZj6YWo or you can hear it in this interview he did for Fresh Air http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3618819 . “The chipmunks sound like regular monotone guys and Dave sounds like a demon from the 9th circle of traitors and murderers.” Thanks for the post. It’s cool to actually hear it for once!
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:31 pm | Permalink
John Bachir wrote:
niiiiice.
I’m pretty sure that they would have recorded the song at the original tempo, and then changed the pitch using special audio transformation tools that can change the pitch without changing the speed.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:32 pm | Permalink
sexy ma wrote:
this is so different 4om the regular on. but its show tottal interesting things
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:47 pm | Permalink
John Bachir wrote:
Okay, I stand corrected. I just asked my co-worker, who used to be an audio engineer, and he said there almost certainly weren’t pitch shifting tools in the 50s or 60s when this was recorded.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 2:56 pm | Permalink
Phil wrote:
The band and “the Dad” recorded to tape first, and then it was played back (at half speed?) while recording the singers.
When played up at full speed, they sound like chipmunks. This is actually a pretty common technique, and something similar is still used in music videos to give that “slow motion” look, even though it is in real time.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 3:26 pm | Permalink
Nathan wrote:
I think your slowed-down version is still too fast. I grew up down the street (Hendersonville, TN) with Dennis Wilson, who did the voice for Theodore on the Christmas album. He has an incredibly low voice. He told me years ago how they did it…by slowing it down incredibly and singing very slowly. Every christmas we giggled knowing it was Mr. Wilson singing in harmony with Alvin & Simon. Your slowed down version sounds like him, but you may have a different version of the Christmas song, I don’t know. But he said that the other 2 had really low voices as well. Anyway, more info for ya. I might have to go slow this down myself and listen to it in more detail.
-N8
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 4:42 pm | Permalink
Nathan wrote:
Sorry, I meant to say: “He told me years ago how they did it…by singing incredibly slowly and then speeding it up.”
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 4:48 pm | Permalink
Derik wrote:
I’m pretty sure that all four parts (including Dave) are Ross Bagdasarian, who did the first few Chipmunks records all by himself.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 5:37 pm | Permalink
Simon wrote:
John thanks for your self-correction! I’m also pretty sure that pitch-shifting technology would not have existed when the tracks were recorded.
ps. This is so old!!! I remember listening to this on vinyl with my little brother, and going from 45rpm to 33 and it was immediately apparent that the opposite had been done in the studio. Classic!!
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 8:10 pm | Permalink
Jim C. wrote:
I have an mp3 similar to this that Dr. Demento has played. It has lots of surface noise, so obviously it was done from the actual 45. According to the playlists, it was played in December 1999 and even earlier in December 1974.
“The Chipmunk Song” was in December 1958 and it was preceded in April by “Witch Doctor” which used the same tape speed gimmick.
I think there were electronic methods at the time to shift pitches without using slowed down/speeded up tapes, but the special equipment would have been expensive, so why not go with changing tape speeds?
I think these electronic methods were used two years later in the 1960 movie “The Time Machine”. In one scene there were “talking rings” that played a message when spun like a coin. IIRC, the pitch of the voice dropped when the rings slowed down, but the tempo did not change.
And of course only 8 years after “The Time Machine”, we had “2001″ with HAL 9000 singing “Daisy” in a constant tempo with ever-lowering pitch.
Posted on 23-Oct-06 at 11:25 pm | Permalink
novabeatnik wrote:
It is also cool that you can hear that Dave seville did some of the voices . Ross Bagdasarian and Seville are pure genius
Posted on 24-Oct-06 at 5:05 am | Permalink
job mudflap wrote:
Dude, I did this with the original Chipmunk Punk LP on my turntable back in 79–quite by accident I might add. It was really eye-opening then. Thanks for the memories.
Posted on 26-Oct-06 at 7:24 pm | Permalink
john weeks wrote:
Tovaac, this business of crediting the source has gotten a little out of hand. Unless you credit the creator, why bother?
We don’t give the nobel prize in Lit.to the stock boy who stacked copies of the book do we?
What are you , a cop?
Posted on 28-Oct-06 at 5:32 am | Permalink
Lou Cabron wrote:
There’s even stranger recordings of the slowed-down Chipmunks in this article…
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/10/29/haunted-by-chipmunk-ghosts/
Posted on 31-Oct-06 at 9:11 pm | Permalink
SeanK » Interesting stuff wrote:
[…] Finally, someone has slowed down Alvin and the Chimpmonks so you can hear how the real singers sound. This is almost a homeschool science and technology unit study in the making. […]
Posted on 15-Nov-06 at 3:03 pm | Permalink
J.K. wrote:
The voices and the idea for the Chipmunks were created by Ross Bagdasarian. He was all FOUR voices - Alvin, Theodore, Simon, and Dave Seville. Get this, my older brother has the original vinyl album of Christmas, AND also has a rare original vinyl LP album of “The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles”! It is a fantastic album! It was made back in the late 50’s - early 60’s around the time of the Christmas album and the Chipmunks album with “Witch Doctor”, another fantastic album. My brother has all three. Original, and he’s a nut about keeping stuff carefully so they are in great shape.
Posted on 17-Dec-06 at 9:26 pm | Permalink