wheat williams

How about actually discussing the software instead of the politics?

I have downloaded the new GarageBand 2.1.1 on iOS 9.3.2 on my iPhone 5S. I cannot find the Erhu or Pipa instrument or the new Chinese loops anywhere in the app. I can find the Chinese percussion (drums and gongs), however. There are no other new instruments or loops in the app at all compared to the previous version, as far as I can tell. I'm an English-language user and my iPhone 5S is set up with English as the default language. I wonder if these new instruments and loops are only available if you set up your iPhone for Chinese (which I can't handle).

Over to GarageBand for Mac OS X: Yes, there are a new Erhu and Pipa and Chinese drum sample libraries. But this is not a big deal. These same instruments (represented by different, older sample libraries) have been available in the GarageBand Legacy World Instrument Jam Pack for more than a decade. (Back in 2006 the Jam Packs had to be purchased separately as add-ons to GarageBand, and they were very expensive. But for several years now all the Legacy Jam Packs have been included for free with every installation of GarageBand, meaning that all GarageBand users have already had a pipa, erhu and Chinese drums for years whether they knew it or not.) The World Instruments Jam Pack, as the name says, has many different instruments from ethnic music traditions all over the world, not just China.

The Chinese loop collection just released is a totally new idea for GarageBand. I'm trying to check out the Peking Opera loops, but they must be downloaded separately and I can't get them to download. Apple's servers must be slammed at the moment.

I presume these new virtual instrument sample libraries and loops are going to be pushed out in an update to Apple MainStage as well.