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Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime is a holiday track that divides opinions—it’s either a nostalgic festive staple or a polarising earworm. Recorded during the summer of 1979 for his McCartney II sessions, the song captures McCartney’s whimsical, experimental side, blending a minimalist synth-driven production with a playful festive charm. Every note, layer, and vocal overdub was performed by McCartney himself, making it a quintessential solo effort.
The track’s defining sound is believed to come from the Yamaha CS-80, a massive and notoriously expensive synthesizer famed for its use in Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack. The CS-80 has a distinct 2-pole filter, unlike the more common 4-pole filters found in most synths, giving it a unique tonal quality. The sound can be recreated by starting with one of the CS-80’s presets and adding LFO modulation to the filter to achieve the rhythmic effect heard in the track.
I’ve recreated the synth patch using Arturia CS-80 V4, a software emulation of the original instrument. This article is an updated version of my original “Christmas Synth Sounds” article. This updated version includes a new preset for the latest version of Arturia CS-80 V.
Firstly, here’s my full remake of Wonderful Christmastime, created without using any samples from the original track:
Wonderful Christmastime was recorded entirely by Paul McCartney during the summer of 1979 as part of the McCartney II sessions. These sessions, conducted at McCartney’s properties in Sussex and Scotland, followed his earlier solo ethos of recording alone without a full production crew. His approach involved bypassing a traditional recording console, plugging microphones directly into a Studer A80 16-track tape machine, and working whenever inspiration struck.
The McCartney II sessions yielded around 20 songs, ranging from eccentric synthpop to ambient experiments. The album itself was a departure from McCartney’s typical rock and pop sensibilities, embracing an eccentric, new wave-inspired sound heavy on synthesizers. Among these recordings, Wonderful Christmastime was earmarked for release in November 1979 as a standalone holiday single.
Although Wings was still active at the time, with the band appearing in the song’s promotional video, the recording itself was entirely McCartney’s work. One of the song’s standout features is its playful “choir of children” effect, achieved by layering McCartney’s vocals.
To set this up using Arturia CS-80 V4, begin by selecting the Bass preset in the second row of tone selector buttons. Next, move the Mix lever all the way to the ‘II’ position, which isolates the lower layer and ensures you only hear the Bass preset. Here’s what the Bass preset sounds like on its own, without any modulation:
The rhythmic movement in the track’s synth comes from the CS-80’s Sub Oscillator section, which functions as an LFO capable of modulating various parameters. To recreate this, set the Function lever in the Sub Oscillator section to Saw Down (reverse sawtooth). This wave shape gives the modulation its distinct downward pluck effect.
Next, sync the Speed to your DAW at 1/8th-note intervals for a tempo-locked rhythmic pattern. The VCF lever (which controls the depth of the filter modulation) should be set to approximately 0.900. Note that the CS-80’s global controls require you to move the lever downward to raise the value.
Paul McCartney, of course, didn’t have the luxury of modern DAW sync when he recorded Wonderful Christmastime. Instead, he would have had to manually set the LFO to a free-running speed and play in perfect time with its modulation. This would have required precise timing, but McCartney made it work effortlessly.
The CS-80 features global filter and resonance controls that affect the overall tone of the patch. For Wonderful Christmastime, I set the Brilliance lever to -0.450 and the Resonance to 0.432. This increased resonance makes it sound ‘juicier’.
To ensure the chords ring out after releasing the keys, the VCA release time for Layer II needs to be increased. This is controlled by the yellow fader on the right-hand side of the interface. Raise the fader to around 1.32 seconds to allow the sound to fade out slower. This means the keys don’t need to be held down for as long, which makes it easier to play on keyboard.
The increased filter resonance makes the low-end sound a little boxier than the original, so I added an EQ cut around 360Hz in the mix. For reverb, I used Soundtoys Little Plate as a send/return for all tracks in the remake. The original track has a dry sound, so you don’t want to use too much reverb or use a large hall reverb that could muddy the mix.
The string part in Wonderful Christmastime may have been played on the Sequential Prophet-5, which is seen in the song’s music video, or possibly the Roland Jupiter-4, seen in his studio at the time. For my recreation, I used Arturia Prophet-5 V, which is also included in the Arturia V Collection.
To create the sound, Oscillator A’s pitch is lightly modulated by the LFO for a subtle chorusing effect, while Oscillator B uses a pulse wave also modulated by the LFO to add richness. The VCA envelope has a soft attack and release, allowing the notes to fade in and out smoothly, giving the strings a flowing, natural feel.
The track also features two short guitar solos, the first at 1:26 and the second, slightly longer one, at 2:41. To recreate these, I recorded a relatively clean tone using a Kemper Profiler and added some grit with Soundtoys Decapitator for subtle overdrive.
I had to apply some pretty aggressive EQ shaping to get my guitar to sit right in the mix, as my raw tone didn’t quite match the original. The main adjustments were a steep high-pass filter to remove low-end frequencies, a boost around 1.23 kHz, and another above 3.67 kHz for extra treble presence. Whether the original sound was heavily EQed or if that’s just how McCartney’s guitar and amp were set up, I’m not sure, but these adjustments helped bring my tone closer to the recording.
The most important effect for that vintage guitar sound is a stereo slapback delay, which is panned slightly to the left. I set Ableton Live’s Delay to 40 milliseconds with no feedback, with the dry/wet mix at 100%. To keep the dry signal intact, I placed the effect inside an audio effect rack, added a second chain without processing, and panned them separately left and right. After that, I applied some compression to even out the dynamics and added a 150-millisecond delay for some extra depth.
Get the Ableton Live Projects for my remakes on the Projects Store. All projects have frozen tracks in case of missing plugins and all downloads include multitracks and MIDI files for use in other DAWs.
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Ace job as always mate! It’s not an obvious synth classic but it is!! So happy that you’ve covered it! Every time i hear it my heart sings! Keep up a good work! All the very best!