Dean Coleman: Cramming for the Party
While the other guys were out dancing to music, Dean Coleman was inside learning how to make it. “I got where I am today because I never went out and partied,” he says. “I learned what I needed to know — I got my gear and I learned MIDI from the ground up.” Coleman crammed music theory and piano, learned all he could about MIDI and digital audio. He became a master of synthesizers and sheet music — a digital audio alchemist and a classically trained pianist.
Now partying is his job. He spins funky house tracks in clubs all over the world and turns out his own music for the dance floor. He has toured with Deep Dish and he’s remixed tracks for Erick Morillo, Harry Choo-Choo Romero, Roger Sanchez, Hernan Cattaneo, Josh Wink, Eddie Amador, Julie McKnight, Felix Da Housecat, Shakira, and The Fugees. He’s also produced and released his own pounding electric house singles for the dance floor.
Coleman does all of his remixing and composing using Logic Pro and a Power Mac. “People ask me what Logic is,” he says. “I tell them: It’s a conductor. If you go to a symphony orchestra, you have a conductor, somebody who runs the whole show. That’s what Logic has been for me since day one. Everything that I do from the standpoint of production starts and ends in Logic.”
Composing With Logic Pro
Coleman is always composing. His ears record riffs and chord changes throughout the day and his mind splices them together before he sits down with his Mac. When he reaches his studio, a room within Silent Sound Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, he has a plan. And that plan often takes shape on a piece of digital sheet music within Logic Pro. “I know how to read music very well,” says Coleman. “And that really helped me when I started producing. I’m able to judge key and take what I know from writing music and apply that toward a program like Logic. My piano and music training has really helped me a lot.”
Once he’s built the general structure of a song, Coleman works with Logic Pro software instruments to embellish his tracks. “I always come back to the built-in Logic instruments,” he says. “I love the ES1 and the electro effects kit is one of my favorites — it has a great, weird sound. And they’re all free, they all come in Logic.” The producer also uses UltraBeat, but not for drum tracks. “I use it more for programming stutters into synth pads,” he says.
Coleman’s tracks are crammed with effects and automation. He uses them to create controlled echoes, delays, and reverbs, often freezing the effect to sustain a certain sound. “I use freeze all the time,” he says. “It allows you to take a snapshot of your effects and just extend them, make them nice, and even over a given time. Without that, your delay or your reverb could get too strong or your effects could get out of control.” The end result is effects that enhance the track without overpowering it.
The producer uses the same techniques to tweak songs that he spins in the DJ booth. “When I get a track, I’ll import it and mash it in Logic,” he says. “I can make the intro or outro different — make it longer or shorter or add different percussion parts.” Coleman ports samples from one song to another, creating seamless sets that fuel the dance floor.
Standing Out
It may seem difficult to stand out in a world teeming with electronic music producers, especially when they all have access to the same gear. For Coleman, standing out has always been a matter of learning more than the next guy and using that knowledge to make good music. “I think you can still stand out because now it’s all about sonics, the way your music sounds,” he says. “You need to make stuff sound good. And to do that, you need to learn about the software and the outboard gear. If you’re on a computer and all you’re doing is drag and drop, you’re not learning what the program is actually doing. For example, if you don’t really know what an oscillator is and how it works, you won’t be able to use the plug-in to get the sound you want.”
Coleman’s advice for learning the basics? “Get a program that grows with you,” he says. “If you have a program like Logic, you can use it as a beginner but you can also use it as a pro. You can get deeper and deeper into the program and it’s almost like it grows with you as your knowledge grows. It’s all there.”
In 2005, Coleman used his musical and technical knowledge to score Angeles Woo’s short film “The Glass Beads.” He made the music with Logic Pro and Soundtrack Pro. “The music isn’t electronic dance music at all,” he says. “It was a more traditional piano score.” Still, there were plenty of technical challenges. “It was like having a 48-track project with audio and tons of automation. There was a lot of tedious mouse work involved.” The film was shown at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and the 62nd Annual Venice Film Festival.
Coleman would like to make more movie scores and gradually move deeper into the world of music production. “Right now I spend half my time DJing and the other half producing, but I’m planning to do more production as I get older,” he says. “I would like to do more movie scores and maybe some television work.” Either way, Coleman will keep making music. “I think making music is just fun,” he says. “I just enjoy it.”
