Many have a passion for listening to music. Whether it’s listening to it at a party or hanging out, while doing errands, or even just checking out your new artist’s album. But not every artist puts in 100 percent work during endless nights of work, like one artist who is working hard daily on the Dobbs Ferry campus studios. That new artist who works to bring more love back into the world is 20-year-old student at Mercy University, Madison Rivera.
Rivera is a Music Production and Recording Arts major who lives by the motto of “Hard work pays off.”
She has said that it can apply to anything, even to studio music writing and editing. “Even though it may sound like an easier job, the only thing that’s easy about it is loving to work on it if it’s your passion and luckily, it’s mine.”
She continues to describe how pursuing this is no easy task, but said,”Whenever I’m at the studio for long hours and I may not have gotten the track down the way I wanted, I come out learning something that someone else and I didn’t know.”
She focuses on putting in work to her editing, flows, and rhythm skills. Rivera said, “I loved music my entire life, but I was 9 when things really began to change for me.”
It was at this age that she began to write her feelings down, which made her “feel like a bird finally learning how to fly.”
She would go as far as to describe the world’s feeling as a record player with no tune.
When things get difficult for her, she always reminds herself why she continues to pursue music and strongly believes in “giving the world back what it’s losing from the hate and problems building up throughout society.”
Although she admitted that she has always had a passion for starting in lyric writing, she said that her father bought her a desktop and computer for fun, which gave her the idea of pursuing music as a whole.
Not just the writing, but creating her own tunes and rhythm in getting through to a listener’s heart and energy.
For that reason, her inspiration for her passion in music is directly derived from her father, but she continues to make music for her father, herself, and her family.
In creating her own tunes and songs, she always gets assistance from other students and her professors. She even goes home on weekends to get second opinions from her brother, who Rivera says “has an identical music taste to me since we love many of the same artists!”
She pays attention closely, adjusting speed, sound, remix beats, as well as lyrics, with her close friend Jotti, an 18-year-old who also pursues studio work here at Mercy University.
Madison will always be open to suggestions, working at Mercy in the Studio in Victory Hall, but her favorite area is Studio B, right inside the office, with the rest of Mercy’s studios’ ambitious and easy-to-talk-to staff.
One piece of advice that she would leave for not just any upcoming artists, but anyone taking on their major is to “never stop learning and talk to as many people as possible. You will always learn something new and helpful from every single person you meet: students and professors alike.”
Rivera will continue to create beats and songs anew, sharing tunes for all to hear, not just at Mercy, but around the world to make the world take back its rhythm.
