Becoming a DJ
Deadmau5
Deadmau5 is one of the biggest DJs in the world. He’s known for his progressive house music and is an overall trend-setter in Electronic Dance Music. His path to Great Things is similar to so many people’s: passion, mentors, getting his hands dirty, creating good luck for himself, and willing it to happen.
Background
Deadmau5 was born Joel Zimmerman in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. From a very early age he ingratiated himself into the local music scene. He and an older friend/mentor, Adam, built a studio that produced a radio show in the back of a local record shop. He would spend countless hours there, skipping school and learning the programs and hardware. Reportedly, he first started making music at the age of 15 on Fast Tracker. He would just be there, in the scene, learning, doing odd jobs and ingratiating himself.
Experience
He graduated from Westlane Secondary School in Niagara and didn’t have a clear path. To pay the bills, Joel took a job at a cannery for peaches and pears.
Prior Work
Deadmau5 can’t say enough negative things about working in a cannery. He still can’t eat peaches or pears.
Gear
Scrapping together pennies from his cannery job, he bought an Intel 486 computer to make music on.
He also spent all him money on a Roland Mc-303 sequencer and an Echo MIA board. This brought on a new phase for Joel — creating music at home. Now he could log the real hours at his nascent craft. Some of his early work was in remixing the punk scene.
Early Work
As an early moniker of Karma K, he worked with Revenge of the Egg People. Here you can see small beginnings, but an ability to seize chances. For this remix, he used the program Sound Forge and the early drum machine Hammerhead.
Early on, Deadmau5 produced music for Canada-based Play Records and made muzak for early Flash pages that frequented most early internet sites.
Prior Work
While he was working on his electronic craft, he took a job with Fruity Loops, the well known audio software. His years of hacking around and teaching himself hardware and software were paying off.
Get There
Finally, it was time to debut. Deadmau5 put out his first album — Get Scraped. He was 24. Get Scraped wasn’t exactly a smash hit, but Deadmau5 was on his way. A huge, crazy Mau5head and epic light show were later, but only burnished the path he had dedicated himself to from an early age.
