Synthetic Sirens - Improv piece using multiple Synthesizer tracks in a GarageBand iOS song.

Multiple synthesizers comprise this piece. Technically, the piano section is a special type of recording known as a ‘soundfont’. This is a digital recording that usually has been a few recorded samples to begin with, then interpolations are made, to engineer the tones or pitches in-between the ‘known’ samples. ‘Synthesizer’ is therefore a term used broadly here. Those familiar with digital music creation, will know immediately this video depicts ‘MIDI’ tracks. This is the music notation computers can understand and create, and music-makers too. Once created on one instrument, it is commonplace - though not always possible I have found - for a MIDI track to be used to drive a completely different synth or other modelled instrument. This universality enables the most common of techniques - playing the same motif or theme across multiple sections of an orchestra or on different instruments in a band. This is why a track created by the ‘Poison 202’ synth appears in a track ostensibly voiced by ‘SynthMaster One’, a completely different synth. The other synth played here, is the Bismark BS-16i. SynthMaster One is ported from what is normally thought of as a more powerful class of DAW plug-in. Bismark has such an excellent piano sound sample it’s very hard to believe they didn’t record every single note on a real Grand Piano. Poison 202 has the best performance in terms of multiple instances of the synth playing at the same time inside a single song, that anybody knows of in the Apple iOS world, probably. These three synths, plus Apple’s own ‘Alchemy’ are the collection most needed for an absolute cornucopia of sound inside Apple’s sonic world on ‘mobile’ devices. As Apple moves ‘mobile’ computing into the more upmarket areas (M1 CPU is the beginning), the sky has just opened up. Heavy and intensive use-cases like audio and video will benefit the most. Limitations are getting bulldozed, and it’s only 2021.