The ongoing evolution of music has become so compartmentalized that the moment someone bangs a gong or plucks a string or runs fingernails down a scratchboard, a new style is born. Thirty years ago, a musician named Kool Herc took two identical albums, placed them on turntables next to one another, and the first DJ was born (of the scratching variety, not the oral kind).

This is a handbook for the DJ. It talks about the history of the genre, the influence of the DJ, and the tools of the trade. There are chapters on Mixing, Blending, Dropping on the One - essential steps in DJing.

The style has become big. A prominent DJ can earn $50,000 in a night for spinning. There will probably be a big demand for this book from all of the newbies out there trying to learn the craft and make a name for themselves.

At the end of it, a DJ is only manipulating sounds that have already existed. He is taking records and recordings and mixing them together and speeding them up and adding effects and things like that. But he is not creating new music. While there are those who will tell you that a DJ is as creative as the music of the musicians he's spinning, that's far from the truth.

There is a place in this world for DJs, and this book might help you attain that goal. But never confuse scratching a record with writing a song. They are two different animals.