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PixieTea ‘ABCD Said’: Music Video Made With Apple iPhone

by on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 49 comments

PixieTea (Zhang Xuanyan) beside piano keys.

This music video by a young Chinese girl has been spreading on Kaixin001 as “A recently very popular girl — A computer + a mobile phone + a camera = legendary MV [music video]“.

The music video (3:39) is named “ABCD Said” and is claimed that all the music was made with the Apple iPhone 3Gs. On Youku, it has been viewed over 1.25 million times already:

Comments from Youku:

354

已不再回来:

Niu.

名字都给人占了:

Apple can buy this and use it as an advertisement in the mainland.

chuchuchu:

Just a viral MV made using a 3Gs.

huimingjaychou:

This set of equipment is not cheap~~ This hinges on the iPhone over 100,000 applications to produce this kind of music.

dina2046liuying:

It’s real! It has already been verified on television! Extremely amazing! There has long been people abroad making music with the iPhone, even creating music bands! [This is] really not bad~~~

～豬八う戒で:

This video has already been confirmed by the news, it is an original, made by herself, and don’t underestimate the iPhone’s effectiveness~

willlogion:

No matter what people say, at least the singing is not bad, right? Don’t always talk about whether or not it was made with an iPhone. Just enjoy listening to it.

This girl is called PixieTea (real name is Zhang Xuanyan) and you can find her Sina blog here. Some photographs of her:

PixieTea
PixieTea
PixieTea
PixieTea


Here is another video (3:43) by Pixietea on Tudou:

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49 Comments

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  1. GloriousChina
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 8:25 pm

    A truely glorious song and talent to our family.

    Reply
  2. georges
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 8:50 pm

    She looks good enough for some to start spanking it with a thumb up their asses.

    Reply
  3. carl
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 8:54 pm

    OMG

    I think I’m in love.

    Reply
  4. lossofmind
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 9:00 pm

    The first mv is pretty diesel. She can get it too… At least I thought so until watching the second mv. :(

    Reply
  5. Simon
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 10:21 pm

    The whole thing is a Midi file that’s been imported bit by bit into the phone then sync’d into Pro-tools. Nice play acting on the video though!

    Reply
  6. Aaron
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:06 pm

    It must be a dream.
    Where is the crazy and beautiful girl from?

    Reply
  7. Name (required)
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:16 pm

    A new ad for Apple in China.

    Reply
  8. Zhegezhege
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:37 pm

    Wow, you can do that with an iPhone?

    I always used to think Mac products were basically PCs in a different box accompanied by a moderately successful propaganda campaign to make a PC customers ashamed to use public wireless networks and make Apple customers believe they are getting value for money. “When I buy technology, I buy trendy”, I used to scoff. But how wrong I was.

    Sign me up, Mr Jobs! And I’ll take one of those macbooks, too.

    Reply
    • ST
      Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 6:06 am

      Mac stuff is pretty awesome. I’m a web developer and being able to run Windows and Linux side by side with the Mac OS is quite useful. That and the fact that the guts of Mac OS is Unix is also nice. When I’m in China I run a VPN off of my home Mac so I can bypass the great firewall by tunneling through it (and not having to pay for a VPN service… I’m cheap that way).

      I think a lot of people buy Mac for silly reasons (vanity, specifically) but it is powerful, user friendly and versatile.

      Reply
  9. LOLZ
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:53 pm

    Chinese music is so damn cheesy. I am pretty sure she used the auto-tune app too, it’s just surprising she did not use voice distortion. Oh well, I guess the Chinese musicians will do that soon enough.

    The Iphone3Gs is a kickass phone but the service sucks. I have the US version and data roaming fee is outrageous in China and Europe. Since everyone has the phone in the US the downloading speed is simply crap because the AT&T network is not built for such data usage. My coworker who checks his emails with the iphone when doing foreign traveling paid something like $4,000 USD last year on the phone. If he didn’t use the Wifi feature in hotels he would be charged a lot more. Apple have since gotten smarter with the Chinese version of the iphone, so the feature was removed LOL.

    Of course, the worst thing you have to do deal with is the apple fanboys. So fukking annoying.

    Reply
  10. FYIADragoon
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 12:01 am

    iPhone is still a 傻逼 phone. Didn’t need all this silly crap back when I was in college. Girl is fineeeeeee though, and her voice is nice. Goes further towards proving the point that only rich kids and kids with rich boyfriends buy these. Never forgetting the time I saw a guy who looked like he was a freshman in college with his mommy having her buy and iPhone…

    Reply
  11. LAOWAIXIAN
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 1:14 am

    HI I AM BAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Well, once again a not-different-from-all-the-other-songs song that shows how crappy, repetitive chinese songs can be.
    The girl has money though, she`s got a apple laptop, iphone, nintendo wii, etc… little bitch go to school, or come to my place

    Reply
  12. afropryde
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 3:06 am

    iphone sucks. The memory is not upgradable, no gps, crappy battery life, multi-touch causes problems, cannot remove battery, can only use apple software – cannot hack linux on it.

    HTC and samsung make far superior phones, more customizable phones.

    Reply
    • laowaixian
      Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 3:18 pm

      HI I AM BAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

      Well, suck it up dude, IPHONE is NOT the topic, everybody is commenting on iphone-related topics. Dont forget the girl`s talent (?).
      I am pretty sure the all of you who bought an iphone had read the judgement on the phone and STILL bought it, so stop complaining about it botches

      Reply
  13. Wastemans
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 4:16 am

    That bourgeoisie skittle is as blighterous as a gadfly.

    Reply
  14. Hei_Bai
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 8:12 am

    Fuck Shou Shou, where is this girl’s sex tape?

    Reply
  15. Chen
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 8:57 am

    ohh Pretty girl. she have 2 iphone, OMG!!!!

    …………..-_-;

    Reply
  16. jon
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 9:25 am

    this song is fucking ossum. I am in love!

    Reply
  17. 贝利
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 10:30 am

    Yeah, apple rocks…
    But don’t be too naif, don’t you think this is already an Apple add in China and it’s part of Apple’s campaign in mainland??!?!

    Reply
  18. zun
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 11:16 am

    AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY BABY!

    Reply
  19. Maestro
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 11:24 am

    The Chinese language is unsuitable for anything but Peking Opera. The fact that tones, an integral part of the Chinese language, is completely thrown out of the window when singing songs is a sad but true fact.

    Reply
  20. dontDoIt
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    Used to be a PC person but 3 years ago got Apple computer with iPod Touch. Not once did either thing break down or cause headache. They stick to what they do well. iPhone is simple…that’s the idea. It’s not supposed to be multitasking distraction machine. But this song was created with many apps that cost money. It’s clever but still professional grade producing. It’s great for capturing ideas/concepts and this shows you can do complete projects on it that sound just as good as studio.

    Reply
  21. the peasant
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    haha we all know that the iphones mic is below the iphone… so why is she singing through the top of the phone?

    i think this is BS

    Reply
  22. ShanghaiSteve
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 3:21 pm

    Facebook has been blocked for quite a while now, but the video credits note a FB page. Maybe this video was made in Taiwan, not mainland China.

    Reply
  23. Omnispheric fan
    Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 5:10 pm

    The music was composed by EDDIE CHAN, not the girl and it was obviously put together in something such as Pro-Tools because of the heavily multi-tracked vocals alone. The only possible truth is that the instruments were from the phone but replaced from a notepad master sequencer version that was running its own virtual instruments (VST’s). A telephone simply wouldn’t be able to handle the polyphony (amount of notes played at any one time) maintain audio quality and frequency separation with such quality while processing inserted and send effects. If it could, studios wouldn’t spend tens and tens of thousands of dollars on processors and mixing consoles. OWNED!

    Finally, you could pretty much bet your bottom dollar that she wouldn’t understand the complete process anyway, its at minimum a 10 year intensive learning curve.

    Summary = Its an AD and she’s a “face”.

    Reply
  24. Dug
    Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 2:13 am

    I’m with Omnispheric fan on this one,the song is the kind of tosh they go for but straight away in the video the bass string fret positions are wrong. The note interval wouldn’t be 2 frets up on the 3rd string, it’d be the first fret. I’m a session bassist and YES that is a laptop based multitracker.

    Reply
  25. TH
    Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 1:44 pm

    It’s definitely not made with just using iPhone
    1) You can see the program on computer, the iPhone programs are most likely just “tapped” according to the song made else where
    2) The singing is not recorded with the iPhone, she uses mic (which could be fake too and is probably instead recorded in a studio like the other vid)
    3) The video is not (fully) shot with the iPhone, the iPhone can’t do focus pulls like seen on the video nor the short focus range you can see on many shots. Probably used same equipment to shoot as the other video

    Reply
  26. Tumult
    Friday, March 5, 2010 at 7:09 am

    What about the stop-motion filming? Is that possible without transfering and editing elsewhere?

    Reply
  27. Heilong79
    Friday, March 5, 2010 at 8:40 am

    I work in TV(special effects), this is shot,graded and edited using proffessional software. The grading alone would take an expert hand. This si an advert for those reasons alone.

    Reply
  28. nerdoid
    Friday, March 5, 2010 at 3:09 pm

    The vocals were recorded with a large diaphram (no jokes) microphone which will be phantom +48v powered. Jeez can’t these people be straight or honest about anything?

    Reply
  29. 你是猪
    Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 1:48 pm

    the music’s good, too bad about the vocal….

    Reply
  30. Parker
    Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    Apple is cool and yes i wanna do it with this gal

    Reply
  31. Goldie
    Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 4:53 pm

    Honestly, this is really simple and not that hard to produce. This is nothing compared to Mystery Guitar Man on youtube. Go look him up, he’s a lot better

    Reply
  32. jason
    Friday, March 12, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    its made with garage band from samples. -_-’

    Reply
  33. LOLZ
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 11:07 pm

    Some news on this girl.

    http://tt.mop.com/topic/read_4129666_1_0.html

    Paraphrasing the article:

    - Human flesh search apparently turned up her real name Kim Yeo-hui, and she is a singer wannabe.
    - She was featured on some cable tv show and apparently has some acting experience.
    - Netizens hope that she isn’t part of the corporate marketing campaign

    She looks a lot better with makeup on, almost a different person in fact.

    Reply
  34. FOARP
    Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:23 pm

    Dude, as someone who used to work where much of Apple’s stuff is made, I really don’t find Apple’s stuff all that impressive.

    Reply
  35. laowaixian
    Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 4:22 am

    allright rightious Mr jones, You`d never agree with me anyway, that is the only way to keep this site goign on

    Reply
  36. Li RuiKe
    Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 10:59 pm

    I’m going with Omnispheric on this one. The production quality of the first video is well beyond the talented amateur level of anything I’ve ever seen. Tools don’t make musicians and music video producers. Years of training and experience do.
    Yes, it’s a viral ad. Yes, she’s a pretty face.
    But, GuoBao, you’re also right about what China needs, sort of. China needs people who are capable of making and playing their OWN music. After years of living here and looking for listenable music that isn’t stolen, my iTouch is filled mostly with Jay Chou and FIR. Thank God for Taiwan.

    Reply
  37. Jordan
    Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 7:43 pm

    Well FOARP, let see if anybody can do the same thing on another phone.

    Reply
  38. chris
    Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 2:07 pm

    The idea that mac users are computer illiterate is commonly held by PC-gaming “i built my own computer” window nerd types.

    In case you didn’t know, programmers prefer macintosh for it’s unix core. There’s a lot more similarities between linux and unix so for anyone that deals with linux servers it’s comforting to know most of that stuff transfers over to your mac. I’m pretty sure all the high ups at google use mac, the rest run linux. I know for certain that the guy who made Google chrome made it for windows running windows on emulation on his MAC.

    The guys over at digg.com use mac. In fact pretty much EVERY web 2.0 silicon valley hacker uses a mac.

    Just because the mac is easier to use doesn’t mean it’s for computer illiterate people. It’s simply better designed. 90% of college professors I’ve seen use mac, more likely if they work in the CS or physics department.

    Apple’s target are : creative professionals, college students, hipsters, and computer programmers/hackers.

    Reply
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