Deckademics DJ School co-owners Doug Morris and Nick Saligoe recently described their business off the record.

"I've deejayed professionally under the name "MetroGnome" (www.deejaymetrognome.com) for about 10 years since I got out of college. I was working with a number of people out of the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Center at 42nd and Illinois Street, working with some kids in the community in some after school classes. We wrote a grant to the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center and got accepted. We held classes there for about two and a half to three years. We gradually grew out of that space. I knew that I wanted to have a physical location of my own. I took about two and a half to three years to get a business together and at the end of 2013, Doug and I officially opened. We just celebrated our first year," Saligoe explained.

Morris also owns Old Soul Entertainment (www.oldsoulent.com) that does event planning, marketing and promotions. He hosts events at the Jazz Kitchen at 54th Street and College Avenue. "I deejay his events and have been for nearly a decade. I have an education degree from Indiana University. We cover different areas of the business and we have different areas of co-ownership that way," he added.

"I run a sign promotion company that started in 2005. Nick was one of the first group of DJs to host this specific brand of parties we were doing. We started doing business together in late 2006. We do event marketing for local companies and marketing promotions. We're closely associated with the Indy Jazz Fest and Jazz Kitchen and are involved in developing local Indy talent. It was established in 2005," Morris mentioned.

Music has played a key role in his family life. "My mom was in a touring choir that traveled across the United States. My grandmother also sang in a choir. My brother was a DJ and that is what kind of got me into the DJ culture as a kid. There was also a rich music culture that has been a part of the rich arts culture in the Broad Ripple community. I was a product of that growing up. My first job was at the Kaleidoscope Library (a former Indianapolis Marion County Public Library Branch). I actually moved some of the bookshelves into the new library (at 4180 N. College Avenue). I went to Ball State University and IUPUI and majored in Communications," he said. His musical interests evolved from playing the trumpet at an early age.

Morris and Saligoe were born and raised in Indianapolis. Morris went to Arsenal Technical High School and Saligoe went to Pike High School.

They started the New Year with civic-minded projects. "In 2015, we're really trying to get into the community and do outreach work, like partnerships with the Indianapolis Public Schools. We've going to do an after school program at Manual High School. We've had Boys' Clubs, Girls' Clubs and the University High School from Carmel visit here. We really want to get into more of that this year. Techpoint, a technology non-profit software design company, has also visited the studio. They bring college students studying software design into town and take them into internships. We had a chance to work with them," Morris noted.

Deckademics provides the tools and knowledge for aspiring deejays. "We are not genre specific. We do teach the skill set and allow the students to apply it to whatever music they are looking to do. There are little nuances that change between the genres of music, but we want them to sound as fundamentally basic as possible," he emphasized.

A vacant Broad Ripple office location was music to their ears. "We just looked in this general vicinity when we were driving around looking for spaces when we saw this place. We called the guy and the space was available," Saligoe said. Their studio at 6108 N. College Avenue, Suite 200, opened in December of 2013.

Deckademics received a Best of Indy Award from Indianapolis Monthly magazine in December of 2014. Approximately 40 students were taking weekly classes in late January, but nearly 400 individuals have learned from their DJ teaching and methodology.

"Classes are once a week for 90 minutes. They are broken up into sessions. The first class is a novice course. It provides the framework to becoming a great DJ, learning the fundamentals, such as the basics of scratching and mixing, counting beats per minute (BPMs) and recognizing song structure. We set up the novice course to be six weeks. Once you get past that six weeks, classes are two 12-week sessions. The advanced classes are six weeks in length," Morris noted.

"We offer a couple of other courses. We have a four-hour weekend warrior crash course for people who want to get a feel for deejaying, on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. once or twice a month. We also offer a DJ class for couples on either Fridays or Saturdays designed to be a fun experience. People have done the dinner and movie thing forever, but this is a different experience," Saligoe emphasized. The course offers hands-on involvement into DJing where couples can record their first mix. For more information, contact 662-8661 or preview their website: www.deckademics.com.

Whether you have ambitions to be a deejay or play music for your friends and family, Doug Morris and Nick Saligoe just might be playing your tune at Deckademics.