The Energy Efficient Holiday Light Spectacular: Songs

Below is a list of songs used in the display, the artist, and if available, an ASCAP title number. The ASCAP title number is useful for broadcast stations who have a blanket ASCAP license. It tells them if they have the license to play an entire song on their station. (Fair use would otherwise limit them to a 30 or 45 second sample of a song.)

NOTE: Friday, Saturday, Sunday nights and Christmas:
An abbreviated selection of songs will be played.

Put the Lights on the Tree by Sufjan Stevens. No ASCAP Title number.

Sufjan Stevens has some very interesting songs. They're usually short and in the form of a vignette, or a skit. Over the past few years, he created unofficial Christmas albums and gave them to his friends and family. Like the ingredients in a holiday fruitcake, some of his songs were wonderful. Others... not so much. This year, he finally released them as a five CD box set, "Songs for Christmas".

For this song, I took the very simple approach of turning the display into a light organ. Each part of the house was assigned to an instrument or voice that was used in the song. Any time that instrument or voice makes a sound, the part of the house it was assigned to would light up. The only exception to this was the red christmas trees in front, which made their own performance that was related to the song, but not strictly tied to the song.

NOTE: This sequence was created before the actual production release of the album. The commercial release of this song is slightly different than what is used in the display.

Snow Miser by Jules Bass and Maury Laws. ASCAP Title #550187341

The Snow Miser song is from the children's classic movie, "A Year Without Santa Claus". I was particularly happy with it, in that it was my first attempt to not just flash the lights to the music, but to actually use the lights to help tell the story. In particular, the downstairs window represents the Snow Miser himself.

I was rather unhappy that the red trees in front ended up doing some very minor dancing to one of the background sounds. I wanted to have the trees dance in tune with the musical notes of the toy piano that was very active in the song, but the notes were too complex for me to extract on my own. I searched dilligently for sheet music, but in the end, I came up empty handed.

I did get a reply from the official biographer of Rankin/Bass regarding their sheet music. According to him, "Maury is very protective of it because of the symphony he is working on, plus he signed a contract with Jules Bass for the new live-action special on NBC this year." But there is some hope that they'll eventually be releasing the sheet music for this song. I'd love to get another crack at making the miniature trees dance to the sounds of a toy piano.

Feliz Navidad by Jose Feliciano. ASCAP Title #360103657

I was really wanting to do Feliz Navidad by El Fez, which had an incredibly rocking beat. But I just couldn't pull a good routine out of it. Some songs are like that.

In the end, I used a sequence that Joseph Ayo created in 2002, and I adapted it to my display. The technology back then was quite a bit simpler, and I preserved most of those limitations in my sequence. A light could either be on or off. There was no fading or shimmering. And everything was done to a 1/10th of a second beat.

I cleaned up some of the timings, and updated it slightly only with a small gimmick. For the Spanish portion of the song, the house turns blue. For the English portion of the song, it turns white. This complimented the differences already present in the song, which contrasts the slower and mellow Spanish sections against the fast and excited English vocal sections.

Although this routine is not very complex, it has a different style that stands out from the rest of the sequences.

It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas by The Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tennant/Chris Lowe). ASCAP Title #391959274.

This is one of the songs that I have to credit my friend and Internet sensation, Fipi Lele, for bringing to my attention. Without her, I would have never found this incredible song. It was originally released in 1997 only to members of their fan club. Luckily for us, in 2005 it made its way onto a limited-edition charity CD "Elton John Christmas Party", which I was able to purchase.

While the sequence lasts three minutes, the actual song goes much longer and includes a Christmas greeting from The Pet Shop Boys. But without listeners knowing the context, I thought it was a bit confusing, and I elected to end the song before an unfamiliar voice starts wishing everyone a merry Christmas in a very familiar way.

The sequence gets more intense 2/3rds in, when it kicks into high gear. I adjusted the timing from 0.1 seconds down to 0.03 seconds per event in order to increase the speed of the display. A chase pattern is played on the trees in front and in the top windows, as the red Christmas trees in front dash from side to side. That is followed by what is an unusually long twenty seconds of twinkling (random flashing). The monotony of the twinkle is broken up in that it is made to match the song, which contains its own set of random sounds and defined sets.

This song is not familiar to most people, but the performance appears to be a crowd favorite.

I Want an Alien for Christmas by Fountains of Wayne. ASCAP Title #390589845.

This is one of the last sequences I created, and quite possibly my favorite. This was my best effort at using Christmas lights to go beyond dancing along to a song, but to actually illustrate, reinforce, and add to the song itself. Quite a few parts matched the song very nicely like playing basketball, ugly sweaters, the little green guy with seventeen eyes, and the alien light show.

I really enjoyed working on this song the most. And I think it is my best example of using lights to illustrate a story, rather than just moving to the music.

Let it Snow Let it Snow Let it Snow by Luscious Jackson. ASCAP Title #420021596.

This is another one of those great songs that fellow artist Fipi Lele brought to my attention. Many of you may not recognize this song, but a few will remember it as being part of an Old Navy television spot some years ago. Almost impossible to buy, I managed to find this on the "B" side of a 45 they released called "Nervous Breakthrough".

This was the first sequence that I programmed for the display, and after boosting the budget for the display to increase the number of circuits and lights, I was completely overwhelmed by the blank canvas sitting in front of me. A blank canvas the size of a house!

Happily, a man from Oklahoma City who only identifies himself as "Santa's Helper" tweaked some of my performance and added quite a few things of his own. He has his own commercial light system that he uses to attract customers in Bricktown. You can see his influence in the song, as his style (of commercial attract lights) compliments this sequence extremely well.

Former lead singer Jill Cunniff has the music video for this song available for you to watch, online. If you go to her MySpace page, wait for the page to load all the way. Then, stop the music player on the left hand side. Scroll down until you see the video window on the left containing two furry snowman suits. Click the play button in the middle of that window to begin playing the video. (Apologies for the indirect path to it, but I did not want to link directly to their YouTube video, and I want to give one of the band members some traffic.)

Angels We Have Heard on High by Sufjan Stevens. No ASCAP Title number.

Another Sufjan Stevens song! He has some really interesting Christmas music, and you should check out his album. This is an instrument-only song that is played on the vibraphone (sounds similar to a xylophone). Like Sufjan's song, the performance of lights is simple pretty straightforward.

Jingle Bells by the Xmas Band. No ASCAP Title number

This song is a personal favorite. A disco rock Jingle Bells with an incredible beat! This song was recorded by the hopelessly untraceable artists known as the "Xmas Band". I tried to track them down, got as far as figuring out that they were likely British, but failed to get anywhere after that. This song wasn't available in the United States, and it ended up costing $50 to purchase it from an overseas DJ-only store

In this song, I ended up creating a lot of back-and-forth motion to go with the beat of the song. But the action during the drum fill seems to be an audience favorite. Before the display went up, this song got the best reaction from an online audience looking at a computer simulation of the display.

To the Xmas Band, I say: Reveal yourselves! And sell this song in the USA, won't you?

Appalachian Snowfall by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. No ASCAP Title number

You can't have a animated holiday light show without at least one song from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It's a rule. Their songs have been sequenced to animated displays many times over, and they continue to gain popularity throughout the United States.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I went searching for a great sequence to adapt to my own display. Sure enough, last year, Michael Farney had created one... not for himself, but as practice using someone else's display. Even more strange, it was never used in that display because Michael never sent him the file! Michael did an absolutely incredible job creating this sequence, and I'm sure visitors to the display will like it a great deal.

Come on, Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance by Sufjan Stevens. No ASCAP Title number.

One last Sufjan Stevens song. This one gave me a great deal of trouble during sequencing, so I ended up shortening it to a very quick 65 seconds. I hate having to do that, because it is one of my favorite songs out of the bunch.

The lights to this song were sequenced in a very minimalist and story telling fashion.