| New
York City – Twenty years into his career,
Roger Sanchez can easily be viewed as the personification
of a DJ who has made it. Beginning as a clubber and mobile
DJ, the Queens, N.Y. native has achieved many goals –
DJ, remixer, producer, label chief for the Narcotic and
R-Senal imprints – and in the past year he’s
even conquered the artist arena. His 2001 single, “Another
Chance,” topped the U.K. pop charts and the subsequent
album, First Contact (Sony Int’l), offers a tasty
serving of Sanchez’s many musical interests, from
house to electro and pop.
We caught up with the globetrotting Sanchez to get his take
on his production techniques, dancefloor strategy and new
DJ technologies.
DJ Times: How did you come up with the tracks on First Contact?
Sanchez: I sometimes ask myself what my creative process
is because every time it’s different. Some tracks
I start off with just a beat and drums. Some tracks I’ll
have a melody in my head and sit down and play it on the
keyboard and construct the track around that. And some tracks,
“Another Chance” for example, I’ll be
listening to records and get inspiration from a sample.
For “Another Chance,” I came across the Toto
sample and the line “I want you back,” and although
I had already started the track – I had some drums
and a bassline – the lyrics drove me to reconstruct
everything to fit those lyrics.
 DJ
Times: Can you walk us through the process you used to create
“Another Chance”?
Sanchez: In the beginning I started with the drums, which
I mixed on the SP1200. The [E-MU] SP1200 is a very old-school
sampler, but it’s my favorite piece. I just love the
very dirty sound for drums. I took a lot of drum sounds
on the SP1200 and sampled them, then relayed them to my
[Emagic] Logic EXS24 sampler. Once I found the Toto sample
[“I Won’t Hold You Back”], I laid it in
and changed the chords to match the sample. Then I played
keyboards over it, wrote a guitar line, had my guitar player
come in, and also had my bass players come in and play a
bassline to it. After that I mixed everything down on my
Yamaha O2R [digital mixers]. I mix everything down on my
O2Rs. Sometimes I find the sample first and allow it to
lead me, but invariably even when I do take samples they
never turn out sounding like how they did in the first place.
DJ Times: Aside from the SP1200 and the Logic, what other
equipment do you use?
Sanchez: I program on Logic Audio 5.0 and use [Digidesign]
Pro Tools hardware to do all my audio. Also, the 5080 and
2080 from Roland to get a lot of my pads and piano and stuff
like that, and the Juno 106 – I still love that old-school
thing. I use a Nord Lead and a lot of plug-ins like the
Virus. Lately. I’ve got more into the plug-in world.
I like to try different sounds out and I’m finding
with a lot of plug-ins, not only do they take a whole hell
of a lot less space in your rack, but you can definitely
manipulate them any way you want like you can any analog
board. And the good thing is I can take them with me on
my laptop and program stuff while I’m on the road.
DJ Times: Have you gotten into downloading MP3s?
Sanchez: Yeah. When I download MP3s, I’ll pull them
up in [BIAS] Peak, then re-EQ them to try to add some warmth
to the tracks. If I have the time, I’ll pull it out
and maybe re-EQ it with my 2PEG stereo EQ just to give it
a bit of tube warmth, but if I don’t have time I’ll
use Peak and process it in my computer before burning it
to CD. I bring a lot of records with me on the road and
I have a lot of tracks on CD, which means I can take a lot
less weight with me when I travel, but can still have a
lot of records at my command. I know Pioneer’s just
come out with the DMP555, which is an MP3 version of the
CDJ-1000, which lets you store like a thousand tracks on
a small card, and I’m about to check that out to see
how that will help reduce my payload.
DJ Times: You mentioned the CDJ-1000s; what else do you
require in a booth?
Sanchez: I require two to three turntables, two CDJ-1000s,
an old-school UREI mixer –they don’t come with
separate EQ controls, so sometimes I get the Vestax EQ crossover
for each turntable. If not the UREI, then the Rane mixer
or the Pioneer DJM-500, which doesn’t sound as good
as the old tube-oriented mixers, but has a lot of control
with effects and stuff like that.
DJ Times: When you’re DJing a long set, how do you
know when to work in new tracks and when to drop that bomb
track?
Sanchez: That’s the hardest thing to pinpoint. It’s
just all feeling. I know most DJs tend to pre-program their
shit. They go, “OK, after this record I’m going
to drop this.” I don’t do that at all. I operate
strictly on emotion. That’s one of the reasons why
I bring so many tracks with me whenever I play. Whatever
vibe I’m feeling at the moment is what I’m going
to go with, and the crowd has an influence on me in the
sense of mood. I can change the mood of the crowd, but I
can also sense the mood of the crowd changing. I imagine
myself being on the dancefloor and think, “What would
I want to hear at that point in time if I were out there?”
It’s all about projection. I just feel when it’s
time to bring in something. When you plan your sets by pacing
it – not so much “this track is going to follow
this track,” but have rough ideas of how to build
up to a climax – you kind of know when the crowd is
going to heat up. When the crowd starts to vibe, there’s
an audible buzz in the room, people are talking at higher
levels. You see there’s more movement on the dancefloor
and the more you peak it, you see people are ready to get
whatever the next level is for the night. It’s a very
sensual or sense-oriented thing.
DJ Times: And how do you sustain your edge for so many hours
at a time?
Sanchez: It’s really mental. I was talking to Danny
[Tenaglia] about this because he did God-knows-how-many
hours in Miami for Winter Music Conference. My personal
best is 14 hours, but that 20-something hours that he did,
I just had to shake my head and ask, “How are you
getting in the zone for that long?” He said, “You
get into this place where you don’t think about anything
else anymore. You just focus on what you’re doing
and the music.” That’s really it. You have to
allow yourself to zone and get into this place where you’re
just thinking and breathing and feeling the music. It’s
really a mental discipline in a way.
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