Apple has announced an update to GarageBand for both OS X and iOS that celebrates the rich history of Chinese music with new instruments and extensive Chinese language localization throughout the app.

The upgrades build on GarageBand’s extensive collection of sounds, this update adds traditional Chinese instruments — the pipa, erhu and Chinese percussion — along with 300 Apple-created Chinese musical loops. GarageBand for iOS users also get two new Chinese templates for Live Loops, and new sharing options to popular Chinese social networks, so they can share their music creations with friends and followers across QQ and Youku. 

“GarageBand is the most popular music creation app in the world and we’re excited to introduce these new features that incorporate the rich history of traditional Chinese music,” says Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Product Marketing. “By adding classic Chinese instruments and new Live Loop templates, the new GarageBand app makes it fun and easy to make Chinese-inspired music right on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.”

“As a musician I'm always looking for ways to take my music in new directions and GarageBand has been such a great tool for me to experiment and add new elements to my songs on-the-go,” said award-winning music artist JJ Lin. “I love how the latest update to GarageBand adds traditional Chinese instruments along with brand new loops so I can play around with mixing traditional and modern sounds to create completely new styles.”

The pipa, erhu and Chinese percussion instruments in GarageBand can be played on iPhone or iPad using Multi-Touch, and on Mac through the built-in Musical Typing feature or by connecting a third-party USB music keyboard. Each instrument includes different playing articulations, including rapid picking and note bend for pipa, and trill, grace note and glissando for erhu.

iPhone users can also use 3D Touch with the erhu and pipa to dynamically control vibrato and intensity. Both the pipa and erhu include Autoplay, letting users tap on any chord and get a complete, rich performance. Users can also play a collection of Chinese percussion instruments including drums, wood blocks, cymbals and gongs.

This update adds 300 Apple-created loops from a variety of instruments and styles, including guzheng, dizi, yangqin and Peking Opera, to the library of Chinese musical content in the app. These loops can be mixed and matched with Chinese instruments in GarageBand to create traditional music or entirely new styles.

GarageBand for iOS also supports Live Loops, a new way to create music by simply tapping cells and columns in a highly visual grid to trigger different looped instruments and samples. And, Live Loops in this update adds two new Chinese Live Loops grid templates, one traditional and one modern, showcasing a variety of Chinese instruments and percussion that are all playable via the Live Loops grid. Chinese localization is also significantly enhanced across the entire app, with all sounds, loops and instruments now translated to Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese.

GarageBand 2.1.1 for iOS and GarageBand 10.1.2 for Mac updates are free for all existing users, and GarageBand is available for free with all new iOS and Mac devices. Customers with older, non-qualifying devices can purchase the app for $4.99 via the App Store and Mac App Store.

Users in Greater China will see these new features by default on iOS and OS X after updating. Outside of Greater China, these new features are visible by default on OS X and can be enabled on iOS devices in the advanced settings menu.