It might be hard to believe, but we’re just 14 days away from Christmas. The holiday season is here, and I’d bet you’re already spinning your favorite Christmas songs on your preferred music service, like Spotify or Apple Music, but there is a change in the wind with how your next favorite holiday song might be recorded.
Alongside releasing iOS 18.2 for the iPhone, Apple is dropping a major update for Voice Memos, which Michael Bublé thinks is “going to change the way we make music, forever.” Voice Memos has long been used to record tracks, jam sessions, and even ideas for songs by artists, but now the app supports layered Voice Memos recording.
This allows you to layer a vocal recording on top of an existing instrument-based track, all with just your iPhone. However, you will need a new one, specifically an iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max with an A18 Pro chip inside. With just that one device, you can play the existing instrumental backing track out of your iPhone’s speakers and use the onboard microphones to record your vocals in real time.
In fact, that’s how Michael Bublé, Carly Pearce, and producer Greg Wells recorded vocals for their new Christmas song, Maybe This Christmas, on an iPhone 16 Pro within Voice Memos. After recording, and during the process, the A18 Pro chip isolates just the vocals by using AI and ML models – likely similar to what Apple uses within Logic Pro for separating instruments, but the big difference is that this is for everyone, free on the top of the line iPhone.
Apple even released a bit of a behind-the-scenes story with Pearce, Wells, and Bublé alongside announcing that layered Voice Memos were rolling out. You can see a bit of the process, including the recording on the iPhone, but also thoughts on the broader impact. Bublé is bullish on it and says, “If an artist has a moment of inspiration, being unencumbered by the traditional studio experience becomes the advantage, not the limitation.”
After completing a layered recording within Voice Memos, the result is two tracks – one with vocals and one with instruments, that will sync across your Apple devices within the app or that can be exported to another tool like Logic Pro for additional mixing or recordings. And thanks to a fresh update for Apple’s pro-mixing tool for the Mac and iPad, you can also easily send that base instrumental layer to Voice Memos.
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So, say inspiration strikes, and you write down lyrics in notes. Ask your band for the base track; they can record it in Logic and send it to you, and you can layer down sweet, soulful vocals on your iPhone. It’s pretty nuts.
Of course, if you’d rather listen to the new holiday song, “Maybe This Christmas” is streaming now on Apple Music, mixed with Spatial Audio. Assuming you’ve updated to iOS 18.2, you’ll see this new feature within Voice Memos alongside some major new Apple Intelligence features like Genmoji and Image Playground.
And as far as Christmas tracks, I’m still spinning Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’ … who knows, maybe he and E Street will rerecord with Voice Memos and include the historic Clarence Clemons saxophone solo.