At this point, everyone knows about Sandpeople. It’d be hard not to.
Portland’s hip-hop mega-group has been putting out a steady stream of quality records and worthy performances for the past few years. And chances are, if you’ve ever nodded your head to a Sandpeople record, you’ve nodded your head to beat by Sapient.
In anticipation of the group’s new EP, Long Story Short, due out next week, and because we think that he’s making some of the freshest shit in independent hip-hop, the Vanguard visited Sapient’s “Basement Laboratories” in Northeast Portland. We got the lowdown on how he does what he does by reverse engineering one of the new record’s best tracks, “Beyond Us.”
The setup
Sapient’s recording setup is surprisingly simple. He has a small mixing board, a single preamp, a compressor, a turntable with mixer (for scratches and sample gathering), a vocal mic set-up booth in what was formerly a closet, a keyboard used for sequencing and synths and, most importantly, a big-ass computer that runs digital recording software.
“I’m not like super tech-head about audio,” says Sapient. “But I know what I need to know. And anything I don’t know I can figure out really quick.”
He says that making a beat is a variable process, done in starts and stops until a finished product is ready to go.
“I think that there is probably a good, rough time, but I’m not sure,” says Sapient of the time it takes to make a beat. “‘Cause when I’m in the zone, working, time is non-existent. But, probably a good, fast beat where I’m really just feeling it can happen start to finish in a couple hours.”
After the initial stages of production, he’ll revisit the work over the next couple days, tweaking it after a test run in his car and putting it up to multiple listens.
Step 1: Drums
The very first thing Sapient does when making a beat is to figure out the drums, which he either records himself on the kit in studio or sequences from samples or other recordings. He often sequences his own drum sounds, as well, combining them with other sounds.
“There’s just so many different ways I do stuff, ” he says. “But I always start with the drums, then I put the sample or synth and then I adjust the drums around that, if needed, which is most of the time. Sometimes I find a sample and say ‘Oh, I want to make a beat’ but even then, I go back to the drums.”
Step 2: Synths and samples
Next, Sapient decides what to build around the drums. In the case of “Beyond Us,” it’s a choppy synth line, which he mimics with sequenced low-end bass, adding that bump.
There are a few other synth parts for bridges and change-ups, including a quick symphonic sweep and an organ part, which Sapient played, sampled and then cut up to fit the songs. Around all of that, he starts fitting in samples from old records—”Beyond Us” uses parts from ’60s psych rock, Himalayan chant music, Motown and cheesy Russian classical guitar playing.
Most of these samples are short, and heavily modified from their original versions. They are cut up, spaced out, condensed, pitched up (or down), reversed and any number of other things. What’s remarkable—and the mark of a great producer—is the disparate nature of Sapient’s samples, and the ingenious whole they create.
“All of these I manipulated to work with the melody. Some are pretty close off the bat and some of them, rarely, are exact,” Sapient says. “A lot of people can’t use samples the way that I do because they can’t get them to be the right pitch and the right time, the right length. I just have ways to do that.”
To arrange and utilize samples (and for his production work in general) Sapient uses ACID pro, Cubase and a few other digital techniques.
“I don’t really have purist morals about that stuff,” he says. “If there’s new technology, I’m like ‘fuck it,’ as long as it’s not cheating—like programs that cut up your sample and set the tempo for you. Abelton, I think? I don’t mess with that stuff.”
In terms of finding the records he uses for samples, Sapient spends lots of times scouring local record store bins gathering thousands of pieces of vinyl. Generally, he says he concentrates on psychedelic rock from 1960s and ’70s, pop music from the same time and international records that emulate their American rock heroes.
“One thing that’s really fucked up is [a local record store] just throws away stuff every week,” he says. “Rare records too, that just don’t have any value to them, but they’re like these records that that might be the only one, y’know? So I have this guilt for not going through there every week and cycling through, just picking the ones that could have some use.”
Because he has a portable record player, Sapient is open to pretty much any sound (well, except country) and tries out a lot of ideas. If it has drums, it might be worth a look.
“Sometimes I find like the stupidest butt-rock or whatever, but there will be an ill drum break at the beginning and I’ll just be like ‘swoop.'”
To follow our example through, “Beyond Us” has samples from about six separate sources, each of which is used in a couple different ways.
Step 3: Vocals and final mixing
The last step, once the beat is done, is to record vocal tracks. Here, Illmaculate started off the proceedings with a verse that Sapient says is about “being aware of your consciousness,” which happened to fit nicely with the track’s original name “Beyond Us.”
From there, whoever else is on the song, in this case Iame and Gold, added their verses and Sapient figured out a hook. Once the vocals are done, they get added to the track in Cubase, where Sapient adjusts the sounds to form a cohesive and consistent track, making sure there are no weird spaces.