Milton ON, Canada – Joel Zimmerman of Deadmau5 fame visited his Alma Mater Milton District High School in November to speak to a class of audio production students. He brought along Steve Duda to answer production questions and they both gave some great advice about working hard to become a success.
Deadmau5 has a way of rubbing people the wrong way, that is to say he has a way of picking fights on purpose to get a reaction. He’s always been a polarizing figure in the world of music (not just electronic music), and most of you either love him or hate him. Regardless of how you feel, you have to take the time to appreciate the man when he has good things to say and provides words of encouragement. When he really puts forth the effort to be genuine, Deadmau5 can be a very passionate speaker — especially when it comes to self-motivation and pursuing your dreams. He really channeled this when he took the time to share his wisdom and experience with fresh young minds over at Milton District High School. He had a few wonderful points to make, and we were please to hear that this echoed many things he spoke of during his AMA video series that we wrote about earlier in the year.
The highlights of his talk included great general advice such as, “unplug from social media,” “do it because you love it,” and, “don’t try to replicate or copy anybody else’s style.” Unfortunately cameras and recorders weren’t rolling (to our knowledge) during this presentation, so we can only imagine how this went over. Deadmau5 claimed that he was, “more nervous in front of 30 students in a classroom than he is when he performs in front of a full audience at a sold-out show,” so we can only hope that his delivery came across as genuine to this group of kids.
If you’re a Deadmau5 hater you’re more than welcome to go back to doing so, but you have to acknowledge that this was a very nice gesture to these kids. We would have really jumped at the opportunity to be in this classroom.
[H/T] Inside Halton