New Apple video goes behind the scenes of ‘The Song’ holiday ad

the song

Earlier this week, Apple begun airing its new holiday ad titled ‘The Song’ which features a woman using her Apple hardware and software to record herself singing along with a recording of her grandmother from several years ago. The 30-second commercial wraps up with a scene depicting her grandmother enjoying the resulting song on an iPad.

Today, the iPhone maker via its YouTube channel released a behind-the-scenes video titled ‘The story behind “The Song”’ featuring the ad’s musician Dana Williams and vocalist Rhiannon Giddens who explain basic concepts behind the commercial and lay out a creative workflow which involves most of Apple’s current product lineup.

We get to see how they used a Voice-O-Graph recording booth studio to capture the spirit of vinyl recording for the ad and also how the old vinyl record was processed in GarageBand. As noted by TechCrunch, the pops and audio features that make it sound like it’s from the 40s are authentic.

In addition to Williams and Giddens, the video includes several folks from Third Man Records, an independent record label founded by Jack White in Detroit, Michigan, in 2001 where part of the vocals were recorded.

Commenting on the accessibility, simplicity and power of Apple’s GarageBand music-making software, Giddens remarked that “Anyone who’s not tech savvy like myself can just kind of find their way around it.”

The video runs two minutes and thirty seconds long, here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77hi9SuKfiI

Apple rarely does this sort of videos that explain the thought process behind their commercials so this marks a welcome change, I think. If you haven’t seen ‘The Song’ ad yet, here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRsPnzcZ1VY

“Whether it’s making a record in a booth for someone thousands of miles away, or a song in GarageBand for someone you love, it’s not just the tools that count, it’s the thought behind the gift,” Apple writes in YouTube description.

What do you think about the video?