“Comprising five iPads, five iPhones and the Georgia-based North Point Community Church’s normal assembly of professional musicians; the iBand was born after members of the group stumbled upon an iPhone performance on YouTube,” Elizabeth Haggarty reports for The Toronto Star. “‘We all own iPhones, and being musicians we all have music apps on them and we went from there,’ explains Greven.”
“When the group performed Dec. 5 in front of the church’s 12,000-person congregation, they had no idea what sort of reaction they would get,” Haggarty reports. “‘We woke up that Sunday morning hoping for maybe some smiles and maybe some mild applause,’ says Graven. ‘We just hoped they would get what we were doing and not hate it.’ Since then a video of their performance has been watched 953,000 times (as of mid-day Wednesday) on YouTube.”
“After testing a few dozen apps, band members Jared Hamilton, Eddie Kirkland and Greven came up with the Christmas carol arrangements,” Haggarty reports. “It was only after rehearsals began that they realized the iPhones were too small to play all of the instruments they needed, so they went on the hunt for iPads, eventually borrowing four from congregation members.”
Haggarty reports, “The iBand rehearsed for only a few hours on the Wednesday before the Sunday service. ‘If we’d only we’d been able to practise a few more times, we could have hit a few more notes,’ jokes Greven.”
Full article, with a list of apps the “iBand” used, here.
MacDailyNews Take: This reminds us to wish everyone an early Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
