I have a pair of headphones that I got as a birthday present, the ATH-M50x wired headphones. They're a pretty good pair of headphones, and by the record, the nicest pair I've ever had.
The other day, they broke.
It wasn't any major damage, like the earphones breaking off or something, but a small plastic piece that keeps the earphone from bending backwards further than it's supposed to broke off. They're still under warranty, so I'm shipping them to Ohio (wahoo) to get them serviced.
I've had to return to my older pairs of headphones, including my old producing headphones, the JLab Studio on-ear headphones.
These were the headphones I started writing music with, back when I had to use (Audiotool)[https://www.audiotool.com] on my school computer because I didn't have my own. Back then, I just used what I had and messed around. I remember making a lot of midtempo tunes using three elements: The Pulverisateur synthesizer, a kick drum from the Audiotool library, and a Cymatics snare. I didn't care that my mixing was bad, or that the ideas were bland, or that the kick and snare didn't match the genre. I just made stuff.
Fast forward about two years: I secured a laptop, got a copy of FL Studio, and wrote a total of two songs over nine months. While I had been previously churning out music like a machine, and now I could barely complete an eight bar loop. What happened?
I think, mainly, I wanted all of my music to be good. Suddenly, I did care about my mixing. I did care about my ideas. I did care about sample choice, and genre definitions, and popular trends in music at the time. I wanted people to listen to my music, and like my music, and want more.
Putting on those old headphones made me remember how it felt in the early days, when none of those things were an object. I vividly remember trying to recreate the sound of (Ace Aura)[https://soundcloud.com/aceaura/sts-wtk-aceaurarmx] in Audiotool, getting most of the way there, accepting my sound to be "good enough" and leaving the pursuit. I don't think I could ever pull that off now.
I'm not sure what the point or purpose of this post is. I think it's mainly that I want someone to hear what I'm feeling, because more people could probably understand than my peers.
I dunno.
For now, I'm going to just wait for my headphones to get back to me and think on this some more.