Q&A with Samuel Lee aka SammAyOnTheBeat
Samuel Lee, also known as SammAyOnTheBeat, was born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, and is now working at Building Beats as a workshop leader and bbLeader coordinator. Samuel went to Institute of Audio Research to become a certified audio engineer. Samuel dropped his Day-view beat tape “Filtered Thoughts” on May 23rd, 2020. He makes music, not for notoriety or money, but because it is his passion; he focuses on teaching the youth about music production and the music business. Working at Building Beats has given him motivation to continue to inspire the youth.
bbLeader Shelsy Gross interviews SammAyOnTheBeat about his involvement with Building Beats over the years, how he got his start, and the importance of mentorship.
(For the full interview, check out the video above)
“KEEP THE SAME ENERGY AND YOU WILL PROSPER “ - Samuel Lee
Shelsy: I know that you’ve been making music for a while but I’m interested in knowing the story behind it. When did you start making music? And how did you start?
Sam: I started in the early 2000s in high school and I started as a producer learning the craft and the different ways of creating music through this program called FL Studio. A cousin of mine introduced it to me when he came over one day and installed the program onto the computer and he’s like, invading my personal space, you know? He comes over and installs the program on my computer. I'm trying to figure out what he is doing and I just see him making stuff and bobbing his head so he plays it out through the speakers and I hear some music come out and I’m like, “What are you doing? How did you do that?” So automatically, my first interaction with music as far as music production was my cousin creating it on my computer and showing me that this was possible using these digital tools.
Shelsy: You see how Building Beats focuses on giving the youth a space where they can learn more about music for those who don’t have the sources to make music. Do you feel like if you would have had someone other than your cousin teach you, like if you had an organization like Building Beats who actually went to your school and helped you make music, would that have been a lot more helpful?
Sam: Absolutely, definitely. When I started, I was in high school and I went to high school for commercial art, you know, I wanted to draw, I wanted to be an animator. The high school I went to didn’t have any type of music-related programs that I could access or learn more about music production. I would go to school and then when I come home I would be tinkering and messing with FL Studio by myself, you know? I would call my cousin and ask him things here and there, but optimally, if there were an organization like Building Beats in my school it would have definitely been a great resource for me.
Shelsy: You mentioned that you went to school for commercial art. Is art something you’re still interested in?
Sam: Oh definitely, I mean my tag is SammAyOnTheBeat so you know that what I stand for is producing music; it is definitely something that I’ve always tried to make a purpose in my life. I was never good at sports back then, and I loved to draw but it wasn’t something that was feeding my soul. So when I got into making music I was like, this is another way I can be creative and test new borders. I didn’t do it to make money or to get notoriety or anything like that; I did it because I enjoyed it and I loved it.
Shelsy: You were passionate about it.
Sam: Yes, I was passionate about it.
Shelsy: Here’s an easy question: what kind of music are you into making and creating?
Sam: I enjoy making Hip Hop, R&B and also off-the-wall alternative music. I’m not classically trained - I don’t have any experience with playing any instruments, per se, The first instrument I learned was the recorder actually. I grew up in the church and singing in the choir, so a lot of my love for music came from my humble beginnings with my church and experiencing gospel music for the first time and things like that.
Shelsy: Do you have any projects coming up?
Sam: I just released my day-view beat tape called “Filtered thoughts” that came out May 23rd.
Shelsy: Which was amazing, great work!
Sam: Thank you, thank you. That was such a perfect reflection of who I am as a person, like chilled and laid back. I’m trying to get more into the habit of pushing myself to release new music, so I do have one track that I am going to release this month.
Shelsy: Alright, Definitely I’ll be looking forward to that.
Sam: Stay tuned for that and I’ll be releasing more content throughout the rest of the year.
Shelsy: Around what time did you find out about Building Beats? And how did you start? How did you discover the organization?
Sam: So okay, this is a wonderful story I would love to share! I used to work retail 4-5 years ago and I was tired of it. I was so tired of working retail. I worked retail and I also worked at a school, where I was teaching music production. I really enjoyed it, but I was only working there twice a week and I felt like retail was taking up too much of my life and it was something that I was just doing for a paycheck, so I put my 2 weeks in for my retail job and I told myself, “I don’t know what I am gonna do but I’m gonna work at the school and I’m gonna find something else that I am passionate about doing.” Once I put in my 2 weeks, I started to look on Instagram - this is a true story - and started researching hashtags that said #musicproduction, #youtheducation, things like that, you know. Hashtags that involved music and dealing with the youth because, like I said, I enjoyed teaching already and I wanted to see if I could do that full time, or at least do it more days out of the week.
I bumped into Building Beats from one of the hashtags and I said, “Who’s this? There’s an organization like this?” I checked out their website from their Instagram and I was amazed, I was like, this is exactly what I wanna do. So I ended up emailing them and I think it was Phi that emailed me back. Shout out to Phi, the G.O.A.T. He emailed me back and he was like “Hey we’re doing a link-up downtown somewhere.” Basically it was a link-up to try and get people together that wanted to be a part of Building Beats and/or to support the organization.
I went to the meetup and met the Building Beats team (which was much smaller at that time). They showed a bit of their work on a projector and I was like, I’m sold. I wanted to help in some capacity, so at the end of the meet-and-greet, I left my email and the ways I wanted to support Building Beats and I left not thinking anything would come of it. Then I get an email from Phi, like, the following week and he just says, “Hey, are you teaching on Fridays?” Long story short, I ended up teaching at my first Building Beats site in Brooklyn at a school called Achievement First. Phi was teaching at that site and he needed me to take over, so I ended up taking over for him and it was a cool experience. Fun fact: Two of our current bbLeaders, Alberto and Angel, were in that class and that is how I met them.
Shelsy: So it’s been five years since you’ve been working with them. That’s how you know social media really helps.
Sam: Yeah, social media is definitely a great way to find your future I guess, because that’s how I found mine.
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I see bbLeaders being a place where creatives can come together and share their journey with others.
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Shelsy: What is your role at Building Beats? What does Building Beats mean to you?
Sam: My role at Building Beats has evolved over the years, of course. For the first four years, I started as a workshop leader. I would take on a site and teach students like yourself music production and audio recording, as well as how to brand your content. One of my biggest contributions as a workshop leader to the sites that I worked at was that I would always try to turn the classrooms into a record label. Shelsy, I know you understand that - you would walk in and I would already have the mic set up and everything.
Shelsy: Yesss! I remember.
Sam: Yeah, we would have a good time with that. What I enjoyed was when students who were like “I don’t wanna do music” saw that I turned the classroom into a studio, everyone was locked in, everyone was working. The quietest students were making beats in the corner, then you have the vocal students writing their raps and their verses. It was a nice experience to bring the community into the class. So that was my first role for Building Beats and I still currently do that as well. Then late last year, I took on the role as bbLeader coordinator, which is to say I get the greatest opportunity to work with a great group of students who come from an alumni network of students that have been involved in Building Beats over the years. Instead of you guys moving on without us once you graduate, you have come back in our circle as bbLeaders, our youth network for students who want to learn more about music production, music business, entrepreneurship, and evolve their leadership skills.
Shelsy: What inspires you to continue at Building Beats and making music?
Sam: What inspires me to continue at Building Beats is the fact that this is probably the first environment that I’ve been in that makes me feel happy to be here. I feel like if I can educate people younger than me that have the same aspirations as I did, I want to give a couple of gems that helped me along my way by instilling them into a younger generation because I didn’t have mentors when I was coming up. Building Beats has helped me find that purpose. And as far as making music, the same belief that inspires me to continue at Building Beats is something that serves my purpose. I enjoy making music; it is more therapeutic for me rather than me making something that the whole world loves - I don’t have those aspirations or those goals for myself. I just make it so that it is something I feel comfortable putting out there or creating. I do it more for myself, and whatever attracts that type of energy, I’m more than welcoming to it. Throughout the years I’ve seen how I’ve been able to help people through music and that’s enough for me. That’s why I continue teaching the youth and why I continue teaching music - I feel like I am able to help so many different people.
Shelsy: In 5 years where do you picture Building Beats going alongside your career and your role at this company?
Sam: I have had many conversations with Phi and we always talk about the growth of bbLeaders in Building Beats. I see bbLeaders being a place where creatives can come together and share their journey with others; that is what you bring for a community that can always grow and I want to bring that same type of mentality to bbLeaders. Students that want to learn music production but don’t know how - we want to be the starting place that gives you the resources to teach you and to include you in a community that is flourishing. You notice in bbLeaders that we have students from every skill level, I mean the learning curve is all over the place for bbLeaders but it doesn’t matter because the community helps you learn; the community helps you grow. So as far as 5 years from now, I see bbLeaders globally. Expanding the growth of Building Beats will expand the growth of everything else. So in the next 5 years, who knows the type of role I’ll be in, but the goal is still the same: to inspire the next generation so you guys can inspire the next generation coming up after you.
Shelsy Gross
Shelsy: The world has been going through it with the pandemic. How has the pandemic affected your job and what has it taught you?
Sam: I’ve probably gained more of a sense of reflection of myself during this time. When you’re indoors 24/7, all you have time to do is think, so I’ve been thinking alot about the things that hinder me and the things that I might fear and how I can overcome them. How can I be a better person? How can I come out of this pandemic a newer version of myself? Not to say that we’re so broken that we continuously need to change ourselves but during this time you want to grow. You don’t want to stay dormant and not grow in the process. I look at it like the caterpillar-to-cocoon kind of phase, we’re in a cocoon right now and I want to come out like a butterfly; I wanna spread my wings and fly.
During this time I’ve been focusing more on family; focusing more on myself and self care for myself because before the pandemic, you know, we live in New York so we are on the go 24/7. I’ve never really had proper time with my family. I’ve never had proper time with myself so I’ve used a lot of the quarantine time to focus on that and the things I care about, and be more organized as well. As far as how it has affected our work, I mean, I have to give it up to Building Beats because our team is so attentive, so focused, and they have the drive to keep going. During this time, a lot of our workshops were in person and so we were like, “What are we going to do?” We came up with an idea in two weeks to build an online platform where we would do our music production workshops, music business workshops - you name it. We also reached out to people in the music industry world - from managers, to radio hosts, to producers, to engineers. Anyone involved in the world of entertainment we reached out to and did Q&As with on our new platform, bbConnect. We have been able to do a lot of our remote work because a lot of the tools we teach in the classrooms were all digital, so we were able to apply that to remote learning. I feel like our connections are stronger in person, but the fact that we have still been able to keep a flow is incredible.
Shelsy: What would you say is one of the biggest challenges you’ve faced while being part of the company?
Sam: It’s funny to bring up the word “challenges” because I always tend to take on every task handed to me even if I’m fearful. I guess the only thing that is a challenge for me being a part of Building Beats is that I am more of an introvert, so I like to stay behind the scenes. I don’t like to really do public speaking but a lot of these virtual calls have forced me to come out of my shell and be more out there, and even in person I’ve had experiences that push me to come out of my shell.
Shelsy: What is a goal you paint for bbLeaders?
Sam: The goal I paint for all bbLeaders is that through all our weekly meetups and all the information given to you and all the opportunities, especially with all the Q&As and the guests we bring in (who you all are more than willing to link up with and connect with offline), once you’re moving onto another stage in your life, like going to college, the goal is to keep inspiring just like you were being inspired through your upbringing through this community. Optimally, the goal is to recycle the idea of what we’re already doing and have it become bigger.
Sam with bbLeaders at Genius.
Shelsy: What Is one thing you wish you knew before you started making music?
Sam: When I started making music I wish I knew more about dealing with the business in the music industry. I got offered a lot of things early on, especially in high school, from record labels and I was too scared to move forward because I didn’t understand the business. I was too scared to show my worth because I was always telling myself I was not ready. The biggest lesson I learned from those experiences was that the opportunity came to me and I didn’t feel that I was ready, but the opportunity might not come again. So sometimes you just have to put your best foot forward and just hope for the best, you know? I just wish I had learned more about the business earlier on, but because I didn’t have any mentors or there weren't any music programs at my school, I had no resources to reach out to. I just kinda had to figure it out on my own.
Shelsy: Is there anyone in the music industry you look up to?
Sam: I could definitely put J.Cole out there; he’s definitely been an artist that has inspired me and his story is very inspirational. Just knowing what he has built over the years and being kind of like the underdog, I always root for those kinds of artists. The ones that aren’t completely mainstream but they have a voice or some type of messaging in their music that always resonates with me. When it comes to working in my favorite program, FL Studio, one of my favorite producers is 9th Wonder. I’ve been listening to 9th Wonder for quite some time, even when he started producing for Little Brother, and I’ve been seeing his growth over the years, working with artists like Jay-Z and countless other artists. As far as on the business side I guess maybe like P Diddy he’s an inspiration, I actually got to intern at Daddy’s House which was P Diddy’s studio so right when I came out of audio school I landed that internship maybe 5-6 months later. I learned a lot being at that studio behind the scenes, such as the work ethic of an audio engineer, and then meeting Diddy for the first time in the flesh and seeing his work ethic.
Shelsy: How does your background and where you come from influence your work?
Sam: I would say I grew up very disciplined and my parents were always on me, especially when it came to education, so I started off in private school. Private school is a different environment than in public schools; there are, like, uniforms and teachers are very strict. My private school days were very different, but they taught me discipline. I transferred to public school around 4-5th grade and public school was a different world for me. I was still into my studies in public school but what I noticed about myself was that I got distracted more easily and my grades started to decline as I went forward in public school. Like grades 6-8 were hard for me as far as my grades and my parents were on me about my grades and so having that system of accountability always made me try to accomplish my goals and reach for bigger heights. Which then translated to my later years in high school and getting introduced into music; I would always hold myself accountable for my work ethic and things I said I would do. Down the line, I started working with artists that also held me accountable because working with artists, they would say, “Hey do you have that beat finished Sam, the one you said you finished last week?” I started to notice that I had a responsibility now; I have to get this done. People were following up with me and holding me accountable to what I said I was going to do. So I learned a lot about my life through accountability and just being put in situations that have forced growth on my behalf.
Shelsy: It’s been a pleasure having you, is there anything else you would like to say?
Sam: During this quarantine period, if there is anything you want to do, I encourage everyone to just do it. Don’t wait until the world gets back to a normal place, just start it now; feed your spirit now, don't wait to feed your spirit. As we can see with all of the things that are going on in the world, it is more important now than ever to connect with people that share your same interest, connect with others in the world that you can build with and create something with. I think this is a shift in the world right now that was always going to happen, but loving and taking care of each other is what is going to help us through these times.