by This November, Apple will plan the “Hong Kong Street Culture” activity month. They asked Hong Kong local game developer Four Fats to add Hong Kong’s local street atmosphere to the game, and they also asked local singer-songwriter Gareth.T to compose a song for the event. Theme song, this theme song is composed by GarageBand software built in iPhone.
In this month of Apple’s “Hong Kong Street Culture” event, gamers can download the “Street Gladiator 2” (Maximus 2) game through the App Store, which will specially add Hong Kong street culture-related levels for this event, including a street market. , machine shop, old Hong Kong-style mansion, and the street level of “Royal City Avenue” full of Hong Kong characteristics.
At this event, Apple will design a series of free creative courses online (click link), leading users to explore ideas, understand art, and learn new techniques in photography and video using iPhone and iPad, and find inspiration from everything on the streets of Hong Kong and local creatives.
In this event, Apple even invited Gareth.T to create a theme song with the “GarageBand” built into the iPhone. Growing up listening to Eminem and Kanye West, Gareth was deeply influenced by Hip Hop culture. But when asked how he defines street music, he said that Hip Hop and R&B are both foreign cultures. For Hong Kong, “the music that everyone listens to in the streets is street music.”
He used “GarageBand” on iPhone with many AUv3 music unit extension apps to create a demo with street music as the theme. Gareth is very casual when it comes to composing, and with GarageBand’s wide selection of instruments, it’s time to give it a try. He is used to using one voice as the protagonist, and this time he chose the flute, because he likes that it has a high-pitched voice and can bring out the melody of the whole song. After that, he used a 2/4 drum beat as the base beat, and then added different drum sounds, synthesizers and other tracks one by one. During the creation process, he experimented with many musical instruments, such as guzheng and acoustic piano, but finally gave up because it did not match other sounds. He reminded newbies not to be afraid of mistakes, and can slowly change until they are comfortable to their ears, just remember to use the quantization function (Quantize), help yourself to align the beats.
When choosing his voice, he drew from multiple sources this time. Gareth pointed to the kits provided by GarageBand. There are many from well-known music producers, such as Take A Daytrip, Oak Fielder and Soulection, which he personally likes very much, and their loops usually sound very good.
In addition, he also downloaded some relatively powerful bass drum samples in the music material app “Splice”, and at the same time selected some more atmospheric sounds as the bass of the song from the many sounds of “Minimoog Model D Synthesizer”. He also mentioned that Model D’s audio unit extension provides a wealth of adjustment options, which is a very powerful extension in GarageBand. And in the bass-heavy track, he added Attack to make the sound more variable.
Gareth also used GarageBand to add effects to other individual sounds as needed. The app has built-in special effects such as compression, cracking, distortion, and visual equalizers to add variety and texture to the sound. He also mentioned that the extension of the audio unit allows everyone to directly use the unique special effects of different music apps in “GarageBand”. For example, “Tape Cassette 2” can add a cassette tape quality to the sound, which is more interesting.
When asked about his experience with this challenge, Gareth praised: “In addition to being a great tool for recording inspiration, GarageBand can also complete a song or even an entire album on the iPhone!”
Source: Apple
