Abroad DAW & Digital DJ System

Working abroad normally implicates that you do not have the same environment and surroundings like being at home. This includes in my case my lovely wheels of steel and my Ecler HAK310 mixer for Djing. Transporting all this stuff to the Netherlands would have been a mess. There was no other way than really sitting down and think it over cause i don´t want to miss my music and djing. The solution was rather simple and i gave it a shot. To be able to continue with playing around with sounds in a DAW like in Vienna i bought myself a new notebook combined with a small external audio interface from Native Instruments. This enables me to use a digital based system for both, producing and djing. Additional i brought from vienna my old Edirol PCR300 Midikeyboard, the Korg Wavedrum, Zoom H2 Fieldrecorder and my Headphones. The only thing that was really missing was a nice pair of studio monitors, allways using the headphones is a pain in the ass. But fortunatelly Rotterdam is equiped with a professional music store (www.feedback.nl) and they had some KRKs Rokit 5 for me (my wallet was at that day a little bit loose, so i bought a Behringer BCR2000 also). Below two pictures what it looks like when everything was set up in my home:

I´m running Windows 7 Professional 64bit on a HP Elitebook, the Audiostream is routed to the Audio 2DJ from Native Instruments. For producing i´ve installed Ableton Suite and for Djing i´m using Traktor Pro2. In lack of a dedicated DJ Controller i´m still working on a mapping for my PCR300 keyboard. It looks unusual, but in fact it works out quite well. When i´m finished with the mapping i´ll post it.

Sailing

Living next to a windy lake notably implicates the wish to sail. During a dinner at my neighbour, her son offered to borrow me his boat for the last Pfingst weekend. Big big thumbs up!! I had only to pay the harbour fee, which is rather affordable at an amount of 10€ per day (he brought his sailing boat directly to the harbour in front of my house). Luckily my girlfriend Mrs. N visited me the last week, so we could enjoy sailing together.

Mountainbiking without a mountain

To get into better shape (this approach is a little bit like the "tomorrow diet") i try to use my bike as often as possible. This includes rides to site and home again. But to be honest, although the bikeline is nicely routed alongside the Brielse Meer (similar to the Danube Island), i am missing some mountains here in the Netherlands a lot. However, on a lazy sunday i spotchecked a Mountainbike trail around the Ostvoornse Meer, mostly routed on one of the dikes, continuosly seesawing with almost 2 (!!) meter height difference. Doesn´t matter, that´s better than nothing i thought to myself and gave it a shot.

The expected golf experience

Weather was not that good today, temperatures raised only to plus 15° Celsius. I accompanied Mr. T "The Golfer" to his 18 hole round at Kleiburg Gold Club. With a length of about 6 km in total it is really incredible how someone can play par or even below.

The Hague harbour or the unexpected golf experience

There is only one explanation: Yes, i do have no sex in the Netherlands...

They told us that this is the only location worldwide where you can drive some golf balls into a harbour pit.

BBQ

Mr. T and Mr. J joined my Friday evening BBQ after work. The super cheap BBQ grill will hopefully last the one summer. Later that day Mr. B came over, too. For the one or the other reason i will not post pictures made later than 10pm.

Koniginnedag - Delft revisited

On which day is it prohibited to sell alcohol before 11:30am in the Netherlands? Correct: Koniginnedag. This agreement exits since 2009 to don´t disturb the celebration due to the excessive alcohol consumption on that special day throughout the country. You can imagine....I´ll keep my lips closed.

We started our national holiday on 29th April evening at the Havanna Beach Club at Rockanje beach.

Mr. M and I decided to visit Delft to praise the Queen. Amsterdam is too crowded and also the drive to the capital city is especially uncomfortable on that day. We started with a relaxing paddle boat trip through Delft´s Krachten where we were invited for our first beers from some students. They also had built up a small stage.

The flea marktes are also a characterictic feature of the Koniginnedag because the sales are not subject to taxes on this day. The centre of Delft is completely filled with small sales booths, music stages and takeaways.

After lunch (see above) we joined a live techno performance in front of the Open Jongerenvereniging the Koornbeurs. They had a nice live setup and as far as i could see it exists of a Korg Electrice MX routed to a Kaosspad mk2, Apple notebook running Ableton Live controlled over a Midi controller and the Novation Launchpad, Korg MS2000 synthesizer, Kaossilator and a guitar stomp box, with all signals routed to a master mixer. They performed really great and we gave our self a bracing shake.

Dank u wel, Delft!