ODESZA HIGHER GROUND

For my artifact I chose to look at a song from one of my favorite edm artists, ODESZA. The song is titled “Higher Ground” and was released in 2017. They discuss the process of making this song in one of their youtube videos posted to their account. They originally had been trying to work on their upcoming album but were having some trouble finding anything they really liked in the stuff they had been trying to piece together. One day they received an acapella clip from a writer named Naomi Wild that she had recorded on her phone’s voice memos which she then sent to them through email. Once they received it they really liked the vocals so they then started trying to build around them, and began to play around with different samples. In the youtube video where they discuss creating the song it shows segments of them playing a piano and in these clips it looks as if they are using some sort of shotgun microphone to record the instrument based on its long form.
We can also see throughout the video that they are adding in some pieces through what seems to be some sort of digital soundboard to create different sounds and beats to input into the mix. For this they could have used any sort of digital synthesizer. When researching ODESZA I found that they also use equipment such as the Sequential Prophet 6 which is a tangible piece of sound equipment used to create similar types of samples that a digital synthesizer would. For mixing ODESZA states that they mix their tracks in one of the three softwares; Maschine, Logic, or Ableton. This song is a great example of the common production format of EDM/techno music. Like all of ODESZA’s other songs, this song is built around vocals that they then combine with recorded and digitally produced samples to mix together in a software to create a piece that the audience can then enjoy.