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Ever wondered what these chipmunks really sound like, before their voices are changed? And no, playing the sound at half speed doesn't give true results; in reality a tape loop is used to increase the pitch, a fairly old and simple audio trick.

Click to hear the original version - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZT6ioABaCQ

In production, the voices were recorded as normal, the artists didn't have to talk/sing s-l-o-w-y or anything daft like that. I mean, could you imagine how long it would take to record the dialogue for a entire show like that? Or an entire season for that matter! Once the recording was made the tracks would have been put through a tape loop to artificially increase the pitch by about an octave (while keeping the time the same); the resulting high-pitched voices could then be added to the soundtrack during the mastering mix.

These days all you need is a half-decent computer and a video/sound editing package to do this kind of thing.

This video shows a reversal of the process, with the soundtrack reduced in pitch by an octave and then restoring it to the video; without altering the time. The only real problem with this is though the voices may sound normal, the rest of the sound doesn't. This is because it wasn't re-pitched up at any point in its production and so drops from the normal pitch to one which sounds like it's been slowed down.

It's no surprise that if you lower the pitch back again, Alvin and Simon sound a bit like good old Dave. The Chipmunks' voices were supplied by Ross Bagasarian jr. the son of the creator of the chipmunks, he voiced Alvin and Simon (as well as their adopted father Dave Seville). His wife, fellow cartoon producer and voice artist, Janice Karman voiced Theodore and the Chippettes.

Interestingly, playing the soundtrack at half its normal speed will also reduce the pitch by about an octave (and fool many into thinking this is how the voices are done). However, this is the way that the soundtrack for the original chipmunk song was recorded, Ross Bagasarian Sr. not having access to a tape loop at the time; due to the fact they the technology came in about the Sixties.

Like any sound manipulation, some slight distortion occurs during the process and if you were to continue to change the pitch up and down, the sound would soon become a garbled mess.