I first picked up the needle in 1991, when I worked as the sound tech for a DJ friend of mine. I was one of six kids in my family, so I had no cash to buy that expensive DJ gear. Luckily, Rob let me take the turntables every once in a while, and I was hooked! I’ll never forget playing “Ice Ice Baby” when it was on brand new, glistening vinyl…
I took a break for a long time after that, but finally dove back in when I asked my friend Dave “wouldn’t it be cool if you could DJ off of your laptop?” back in 2002. Of course, unbeknownst to me it had been going on for quite some time, so clearly it was a brilliant idea!
I started off with PCDJ, and after being mostly disappointed with it moved on to Virtual DJ. That program is a really fun tool, with lots of bells and whistles – along with one of the most accepting, user-friendly communities I’ve ever been a part of.
Learning the technical aspects of digital DJing wasn’t easy – I tried tons of different configurations of sounds cards, laptops and controllers. It was a pain! A couple of books really helped – Laptop Music Power! by John Von Seggern and How to DJ Right by Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster (thanks guys, your books are amazing!).
Even with these amazing resources, the learning curve was steep. After finally getting to a place where I felt comfortable with my setup, I decided to make some videos so that others wouldn’t have to work as hard for the info as I did. Also, it’s just easier to show people stuff rather than try to type it out. I’m proud to say that in total they got over 360,000 views as I write this, so check them out and let me know what you think!

That's just awesome. Me and my buddy were talking just this weekend. He's a CFO of a large company making a few hundred K a year, and he said but what I'd really like to do is just DJ once. I'm going to send him to these videos, I'm sure he'll really enjoy them.
Thanks so much, just what I was looking for.
Mike
Posted by: Denver PC Guy | April 06, 2009 at 07:48 PM
Cool! Feel free to pass my info to him - I'm always down for talking about Djing!
Posted by: Ryan Miller | April 06, 2009 at 07:57 PM