Apple is also releasing today a 2.1 upgrade to GarageBand for iOS. The mobile sibling of GarageBand and Logic on desktop doesn’t get a whole lot of attention, but it’s a reminder that music creation remains central to Apple – even the Apple that sells the world’s favorite phone, not just the Apple that sells the Mac.
GarageBand 2.1 includes some features you may or may not care about. But there’s reason to take notice.
First, there’s Live Loops. Now, Apple calls this “an entirely new and intuitive way to create amazing music,” but it’ll sound familiar. You tap cells and columns in a grid to trigger instruments and sampels – so, basically, it’s Ableton Live.
In this case, it’s Ableton Live cross-bred with Loopy, in that there are pictures of the loops you’re triggering. (It even borrows the circular display from Loopy and other recent mobile apps.) So it’s anything but “entirely new,” though it could be useful – and anything that draws more people to mobile music making may draw them in to third-party apps, too.
GarageBand 2.1 is also Apple’s answer to what to do with the iPad Pro for music making, with an updated display and extra controls. But that story to me gets more interesting with third-party apps.
Also new – a library of loop templates, and the Drummer feature from desktop brought to iOS. Apple is quick to mention “EDM” as a genre, though to be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Drummer’s attempt at aping various genres. I remain unconvinced whether presets in general are drawing more people into music making; my strong suspicion is that actually recording their own ideas (as with Apple’s Music Memos, also introduced today) is what will connect with people passionate about music making. Of course, I’m biased, and even if I’m wrong, I find that stuff more interesting. (Don’t you?)
But that said, I think this quiet 2.1 update is actually really important, for a completely different reason.
2.1 on iPhone 6s and 6s Plus also includes support for expressive playback of instruments via 3D Touch. We’ve seen that in ROLI’s NOISE 5D app, which even allows you to play an iPhone a little bit like you’d play their Seaboard controller. But the fact that it’s now coming from Apple means that the phone maker is committed to making this kind of control an official use of 3D Touch – a far cry from the “right-click to a context menu” that we saw first.
Making this expressive is what I wanted to do with 3D Touch the first time I saw it, even more once I felt it. And it’s way more interesting and intuitive than these other applications.
If Apple is supporting it officially, that means good things for third-party developers who want to play with it, too. And I hope we see this soon on iPads (along with Pencil support across the whole range) – fingers crossed or as the Germans say, thumbs pressed, so to speak.
GarageBand is bundled free with new iOS devices 32GB and larger, and is available as a free upgrade on the App Store for existing users. iOS 9 or later is required.
some competition on modstep… Just clever to have this new apps in iOS!!! 😀
I expect a new roland sampler in this way audio/midi clip ala ableton in standalone format but… with these apps maybe it is time to buy a second ipad. ouyeeah!
edit:
Live loops is not available for older ipads (4 and over only) so modstep wins this battle and GB should wait until I win the lotto. :V
Plus Modstep integrates external instruments easily with templates! Can’t wait for another update
It also shipped with Audio Unit (instrument) support.
When Apple uses the phrase “entirely new” about any of it’s products, it typically means “Entirely new for Apple” and not the industry in general. Apple doesn’t think about things outside its one ecosystem very much. At least that’s my take…
Maybe not entirely new for this particular audience, but I doubt you and I are the target market. To be fair Apple have done a lot of entirely new things that people don’t even remember. I switched over from PCs (limited budget the reason originally) when OS X came out because core audio was such a revelation after the crappy state of PC audio technology at the time. I remember on the PC just having duplex playback/recording could be off limits in those days without an expensive converter, that most likely had buggy drivers that may or may not have worked: don’t even talk about on a laptop. Thankfully it’s all possibly on any platform or device now, but back then it was a dogs breakfast
Whatever Apple says now is just marketing guff for the masses and best taken for the fluff that it is. But I’d rather not go back to PC cards, serial ports, scsi, floppies, installing drivers, DOS and all of that stuff that Apple swept away with their entirely new developments over the last 16 years.
>When Apple uses the phrase “entirely new” about any of it’s products, it typically means “Entirely new for Apple” and not the industry in general.
Rather it means: it’s the first time this products comes in a usable and half-thought out form that people will actually care about in droves.
Like tablets. There were tablets before the iPad, but you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with them, as they got the worst of both words (tablet and desktop computing).
Or “unix on the desktop”. There were Linux desktops before OS X, but it was (and still remains) the only fully certified UNIX were the average person can get shit done, with a usable GUI, things mostly “just working” (instead of trying to get your laptop to properly suspend or support a composited UI, or connect to MIDI, etc), and with most of the unicy stuff devs want AND the proprietary stuff users want (from Logic, Pro Tools and Cubase to Office and the Adobe Creative Suite).
Hopefully they’ll add something like live loops to Logic soon. Touch tracks have been there in the environment forever but they’re pretty clunky to use and no match for ableton (or Maschine for ad lib sequencing). I’ve tried to like ableton but I keep going back to Logic — and the recent addition of proper midi fx and the note repeat function etc. have just made it better than ever. Just needs phrase/loop sequencing now and I’ll be set. They’ve got the foundation for it in touch tracks at least.
One can only dream.
I hope they add loops/timeline to MainStage, since it would solve all my backing track woes of running MainStage for synths and Ableton for backing tracks in the.. um.. background.
If it was part of Logic then it would make a lot of sense to be part of MainStage: it could have a system to setup and save a session (in Logic) that could be opened by MainStage: and maybe on the iPad app too … to a limited degree
I hope GarageBand is just a test drive before they add it to the desktop apps, since they must share a lot of the same code.
omg i remember using Touch tracks many years ago, very cumbersome indeed. If Logic added a loop based, Session style composition section, it would become a serious competitior for Ableton and Bitwig.
I’m glad they chose “scenes” (not sure what they are called in GB) to be laid out horizontal while keeping the mixer vertical. This way when switching between the Live Loops view and the timeline view things don’t get re-arranged. I always found switching between Ableton’s session/arrange views a bit disorienting.
Oh and thank god we finally have AU ext support
I’ve long used Moog’s Animoog for expressive iOS keyboard input. You’ve been able to move your finger in the y axis and have that change things about the timbre or filter of what you’re playing. You have no control of what you’re able to control in GarageBand, but I just tried it and not only can you move your finger in the y axis to add vibrato, but you can press harder to affect the filter (at least with the vintage lead, they may not all have the same options). Pretty expressive.
appleton thank you thankyou
Here’s a question: Does anybody know how to download the additional content (instruments and samples) for Garageband on the iPhone? Absolutely cannot find it anywhere despite the app store listing the download.
This actually pretty good on iPhone 6+. Graphics are borrowed from Launchpad app that has the same way of launching clips. Not that i can imagine any real use for this it’s fun to play. And EDM as genre is a classic!
Freewheeling predates loopy for the circular display of waveforms. It existed even before the iphone (2002 at least) http://freewheeling.sourceforge.net/
Apple also released Logic control for iPhone and it’s great!
It’s everything i would want from phone controller. I don’t have plus model so don’t know does it support 3D touch, but the way how fader resolution is handled by sliding finger sideways is superb. Also shortcuts take cue on Slate Batch commander.
I only have iPad 1 so have not used Logic remote before.
Honestly, i hate cdm’s new layout/look.The headline serif font totally doesn’t match the site’s main font which in itself looks very smeared and blurry in Firefox, it all looks cramped while the left centering of the site leaves the column on the right side (almost a 1/3 width) totally unused as wasted space etc etc.The former layout looked so much fresher.
I like the idea of sketching ideas with Ableton style composition in GB and then being able to open it up in Logic Pro.
I can’t use any of the EDM or DJ-style features, I have no interest in that.
What does concern me is that now I cannot move my iOS created music projects to OS X for further work because the brand new instruments in iOS are not available in the OS X version of Garageband (the file can be shared in iTunes as before, but the new instruments are simply missing). This puts a major crimp in productivity.
Why in the heck didn’t they update the desktop version at the same time… or at least provide warning that the GB music files would be basically hobbled for anyone attempting to do finishing work on the desktop?
>Apple is quick to mention “EDM” as a genre, though to be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Drummer’s attempt at aping various genres.
On the other hand, judging from the unlistenable “performance art/sensors” stuff that you seem to be the biggest fan of, that’s not saying much…