I was just wondering. It certainly would be interesting.
Well, years ago before CDs we just slowed down the record player. Chipmunks songs just sound like some guys harmonizing and singing very slow.
Dr. Demento occasionally plays a processed version of the song in which most of the chipmunk parts are slowed down to the original pitch of the singer, Dave Seville (aka Ross Bagdasarian). You should be able to find it somewhere on the web, or email me for more information.
Well, shortly after I posted the OP, I remembered the speed up/slow down feature in Sound Recorder. I converted my mp3[sup]1[/sup] of The Christmas Song into a .wav file and slowed it down—yep, that’s ol’ Ross singing and talking with himself. Kinda interesting, except the music remained at a retarded[sup]2[/sup] pace. I am hoping to find this version with normal-speed music; if not, I’ll hit you up, rowrrbazzle; thanks.
I dug deeper into said compilation and found “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by the Chipettes; I proceeded in the usual manner, expecting to hear some women singing. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a basso singing in tenor range was the source! I guess female voices are generally too high to provide for a clean track in this case.
Posted too soon:
[sup]1. Off my CD compilation of theirs.
- As in, “slowed down”.[/sup]
Although it’s not the Chipmunks, on this page (Go down to 1966), you can hear Dan Ingram recording a promo for a New York radio station where his voice is high-pitched. At the end, Dan sings along with the backup singers on the music bed. You’ll see he had to sing slowly so the tempo would be correct.
Looks like I misunderstood - on the Dr. D. version, the slowed-down parts were slowed down in exactly the same way as you did for yourself, both the voices and the music. AFAIK, there is no version recorded straight, i.e., normal voices and music.
Oh, alrighty then. 
Disregard the e-mail, in which case, and thanks!
Ummmmm.
I don’t think they made the Chipmunks recordings by speeding up the singers. I think ol’ Ross Bagdasarian just looked at his sound mixing board and said"Gee, what if I just suppressed all those lower frequencies and jut left the high ones. Everyone would sound like chipmunks!" It would make ythings a heluvalot less complicated – you’d sing at normal speed, so you wouldn’t have to gauge your speed so it came out sounding the correct speed. You’d just sound as if you took a near-lethal hit of helium.
No, that’s not how Ross B. did it. You don’t get anything like the sound of the Chipmunks just by removing the bass tones. As others have said, he sang each vocal part of the song slowly, and then speeded up the tape. It’s not that hard to get the slowed tempo right if you have a metronome ticking for you on the other side of the recording studio glass.
IANASound Engineer, but I didn’t say that he “just removed the bass tones”. I think he removed a heckuva lot more than that, only leaving the highest frequencies, amplified and adjusted relative to each other. I’ve heard this kind of thing too often to believe that it’s always just speeded up.
There’s also a christmas song by Canned Heat which features the Chipmonks, IIRC. Christmas Boogie, I think.