Snoop Doggy Dogg – Christmas intro
The Neighborhood Kids – Christmas is for Everyone
The Gifted Children – Jingle Bells
Ruth White – Activity Songs for Christmas
Vince Guaraldi – Skating
Weezer – We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Adam Faith – Lonely Pup (in a Christmas Shop)
Lady GaGa – Christmas Tree
Stompin’ Tom Connors – Jingle Jangle Aeroplane
The Royal Guardsmen – It Kinda Looks Like Christmas
OK Go – Father Christmas
The Kinks – Father Christmas
Harvey Averne Band – Let’s Get it Together This Christmas
Guster – Donde Esta Santa Claus?
Honky Tonk Confidential – Christmas Prison
Ra John and the Rubba Dub Dub Band – The Christmas Calypso
Bob Dylan – Must Be Santa
Sufjan Stevens – It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
Rhys O’brien – Christmas Morning
Nat King Cole – The Happiest Christmas Tree
The Granville Williams Orchestra – Santa Claus is Ska-ing to Town
Whaley Boys – O, Tannenbaum
Tony Sacco – Jolly Fat Man
Fast Food Rockers – Festive Food Song
Funk Machine – Soul Santa
Alma Cogan – Never do a Tango With an Eskimo
Gentleman Auction House – On the Rooftops
Nullsleep – Silent Night
The Hot Rods – Christmas in Hawaii
Bobby Sherman – Goin’ Home (Sing a Song of Christmas Cheer)
Electric Jungle – Funky Funky Christmas
Eydie Gorme y Los Panchos – Navidad y Ano Nuevo
The Joe Gibbs Family – Winter Wonderland
The Black on White Affair – Auld Lang Syne
Auto-Tune, properly torqued up, is the rare edit that calls attention to itself. Auto-Tune software detects pitch, and when a vocal is routed through Auto-Tune, and a setting called “retune speed” is set to zero, warbling begins. This, roughly, is what happens: Auto-Tune locates the pitch of a recorded vocal, and moves that recorded information to the nearest “correct” note in a scale, which is selected by the user. With the speed set to zero, unnaturally rapid corrections eliminate portamento, the musical term for the slide between two pitches. Portamento is a natural aspect of speaking and singing, central to making people sound like people. A nonmusical example of portamento would be “up-speak,” a verbal tic common in some people under thirty. (Can you imagine the end of every sentence rising in pitch? Like a question?) Processed at zero speed, Auto-Tune turns the lolling curves of the human voice into a zigzag of right-angled steps. These steps may represent “perfect” pitches, but when sung pitches alternate too quickly the result sounds unnatural, a fluttering that is described by some engineers as “the gerbil” and by others as “robotic.”
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