GarageBand is Apple’s take on music recording software, or at least a more user-friendly option compared to more complex softwares like Logic Pro. Users can either plug directly into their computers or iOS devices and record into the app, or they can choose from digital instruments to help recreate the effects of a drum, guitar, or piano.
For the most part GarageBand offered up your more mainstream instruments which we guess is pretty normal, but it seems that just the other day, Apple decided to bring GarageBand to China and with the launch of the app, Apple also introduced support for local instruments, like the Erhu which is basically a bowed instrument that can be found and heard in traditional Chinese music.
In fact as you can see in the video above, local musician JJ Lin met up with Tim Cook where he and Apple’s CEO performed together and used GarageBand’s Erhu to cover one of Lin’s songs called “The Key”. As far as we can tell, the sound is pretty good and to the untrained ear sounds almost like the real thing.
Given that Apple does consider China to be one of its largest markets, or at least the potential to be one of its largest markets, it’s not surprising that they would create instruments in GarageBand to cater to the local market.