How’d you get your start?
I’m curious about how you guys got your respective starts as DJs. What equipment did you use? Where’d you play? Are there any funny stories involved?
A friend asked if I wanted to do it. The equipment was crap. It was a teen club and The booth was up kinda high and stoopid kids would throw requests up. they would land on the TT’s giving me all kinds of fits. It’s been 20 years since then and one of those stoopid kids is in the bedroom asleep right now. She told all her friends then she was going to marry me and they all laughed at here.
Haha, that’s awesome
birthday parties and winamp shuffle plus a good song selection. that was my start 
First time I ever DJed was at a teen club, too. I was working as a sound tech, and one of the DJs I worked with brought me out to help him move sound gear. After watching him use Final Scratch for about an hour I told him to take a break and never looked back.
When I was about 17-18 (10 years ago now) in Devon, my mate had a pub and he asked me to play fridays. I took my Gemini turntables and Gemini mixer down and played house and trance. One night a few people came in and one of them asked me if I wanted to play some free parties. Ended up doing loads over the next few years and a few larger organised events.
Meet as many people in the game as you can, that’s my advice. I was lucky enough to meet loads through the parties.
start of last fall semester (1st year in college) friend introduced me to edm and i fell in love, next semester im in a frat party as a pledge, go up to the booth (in this case a laptop connected to speakers) and started mixing (aka jumping between youtube and hypmemachine)
as said before by pl on tis thread, never looked back
I was 10 years old in 1994, and I heard a promotional mix CD off Moonshine Records (Speed Limit 140+ BPM Vol 1) and it caught my attention. I was also heavy into video games, so electronic music really was at home with me in plenty of respects as silly as that sounds.
So I did alot of hard manual labor, eventually buying an entry level setup consisting of 2 turntables and a mixer, I think they were Numark.
Then when I was old enough to legally work with a permit, I took on hard manual labor jobs, scored my first pair of Technic SL-1200’s, and bought a Vestax PMC-55 (dope ass mixer at the time). I took on a moderator position at 20,000+ member message board dedicated to raves, connected with alot of people and sent out promotional CDs. Eventually I landed a radio gig, and have been a resident for quite a few years.
that is a sweet story 
shit it is. living the dream…
I’m going to marry you.
(If someone laughs its true)
In the mid/late nineties, i was in a quite a few bands. Playing guitar, piano and organ mainly. Then i started to mix some synths in with one of the bands. Around '98 i started getting more into House and D’nB. Started producing tracks in cakewalk. And i was passing out cd’s at a party and was asked if i was a dj. I told him i could do a live show, but he wasn’t interested. The next day i ordered a pair of belt drives and a gemini mixer. I started off just mixing all of my old records, mostly funk/soul and hip hop. Then i got a copy of Aphrodite’s “Urban Jungle” and started collecting drum and bass. In the beginning i was probably ordering 20 records every week. In 2000 i saw “Open Decks” spot at a party, i was the only dj who showed for the spot. I got to play for 2 hours and loved every minute of it. It was early in the night so there weren’t many people, but they were all dancing there asses off. From that point on there was no turning back. It took another 3 years before i got my first resident spot, but i played some crazy ass shows in that time, BARN RAVE!!!
Was a drummer for 10 years, and a music geek for longer - most of my stuff was .mp3 as I was a CompSci bod by degree, so a bit of an early adopter of things like that.
Moved into a small flat with my then g/f (now wife) and didn’t have anywhere to set my kit up so was suffering from musical frustration - I always loved music, and wanted to share my love of it with other, but didn’t want to DJ as
a) saying “I’mas DJ” seemed really wanky
b) I didn’t want to rebuy all of the .mp3s I had on vinyl.
Mate from the local pub (Oli Larner, who many of the Bristol music lot will probably know) introduced me to Traktor, and I got a BCD3000 from the missus for Xmas, so I started messing about with music. Discovered Puple Radio from my time on the Big Chill Forum, did a few mixes for them, and then started playing houseparties and then moved on to the Big Chill Bar in London … haven’t really looked back …