LEARNING STILL: STRAWBERRY-YAH

Soundcloud link - https://soundcloud.com/binneemusic/strawberry-yah-young-posse-blue-dot-flip-binn-ee

Let me be real for a second. This remix? It almost didn’t happen. Not because I didn’t want it to, but because I’m working with the most basic setup you can imagine. I’m talking the cheapest wired earbuds I could find in my local pharmacy and the weakest laptop that does a Mortal Kombat Hara-Kiri every time I open the project file.

There’s no studio. No monitors. No nice headphones. No car to test the mix in. Not even friends nearby who can give it a listen and tell me if it sounds alright. Just me, my broken gear, and a whole lot of trial and error.

At first, it felt impossible. I’d bounce a mix and listen on my laptop, then try it on my phone, then back to laptop, then export it again. Every time it was like, nope. Not yet. I’d tweak the EQ, fix the levels, try a different mastering preset. Still not right. Then I’d realize I overdid something or made it worse and have to backtrack. Hours gone just like that.

But honestly, I think that struggle taught me more than any tutorial ever did. When you’ve got nothing but your ears and your instinct, you start to really listen. Like really listen. You start to pick out the tiniest changes. You learn what your earbuds exaggerate or hide. You start trying to memorize how things should sound, even if your tools aren’t showing it to you clearly.

It’s frustrating, yeah. It’s exhausting too. There were nights where I’d sit in the dark, looping the same eight bars over and over, wondering if I was just wasting my time. But every now and then I’d bounce a version that actually hit. Not perfect, but it felt good. It felt like progress.

This remix is that progress. It’s the sound of making it work when nothing is working for you. It’s what happens when you stop waiting for the perfect setup and just start pushing through with what you’ve got.