Today we’d like to introduce you to Sergio Rivera.
Hi Sergio, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Music has always been a part of my life. Growing up in a Puerto Rican household, my mom played Latin music from several genres. She would also play many 80’s and 90’s freestyle music and Hip-Hop/R&B. My sister, on the other hand, would have a different musical taste. When we were younger, she let me borrow her iPod sometimes because I didn’t have my own. So I was stuck listening to whatever type of music was on it. It was a lot of EDM, dance, techno, pop and rock. As a young kid growing up, I just kept getting thrown all these different flavors of sound, which grew my taste for all types of music. My grandma had bought me a kid-sized acoustic guitar, and I used to play with that all the time. My mom had bought me my first electric guitar and a little electric piano, too. I would always play, play, but I needed help understanding what I was doing, just going by ear. I never took music seriously, though, throughout my teenage years; I was trying to figure myself out and life itself. But it wasn’t until after I joined the military as a construction electrician I found my love for music. In mid-2018, I bought myself a MacBook and Logic Pro. I tried to make music as a producer at first, but it was too difficult for me at the time, so I decided that I was going to be an artist instead. Every day after work, I would go straight into recording myself. At the same time, I always mixed myself learning either from YouTube or just experimenting. I record my friends and mix their songs, too.
I was learning very quickly in a short amount of time about mixing and all the technical aspects of it. After I got out of the military, I decided to take my knowledge further and enrolled and graduated with honors from FIRST Institute for their Recording Arts & Show Production program. I was shocked at how much more there was to know, and I initially wanted to become a better engineer for myself as an artist, but now I have grown to love the audio engineer side of things from all aspects of the audio industry. I am currently enrolled at Full Sail University for Recording Arts because I wanted to refine my audio knowledge to take it further and network with many artists and engineers. I’m also a recording engineer at Odyssey Studios; I do a lot of freelance work as a mixing engineer and audio/visual technician. From the artist side of me, I record myself to make new songs occasionally whenever I can. I have also been producing a lot of my beats and making beats for other artists as well. It’s funny how what I initially wanted to do when I first got into music was the last aspect of music I finally started to learn, and now everything makes sense.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been the complete opposite of a smooth road during this whole process. So, when in the military, I was struggling if I should focus more on my music career or my military career. Music made me happy, but I slowly started to dread what I did for work in the military. Being an electrician is what I thought I wanted to be, but music saved my life in so many ways. It wasn’t just about recording and having fun; it was a way to express myself and my thoughts and emotions in ways I couldn’t have imagined before. Every time I went to work, it was stressful and life-draining, and I had to pretend to be something that I wasn’t because I wasn’t able to express myself truly. Once I got out of the military, music was my main mission, and I wanted to learn everything that I could, but along the way, I had to move back in with my mom. Even though me and my mom have a close bond, living with her can be super stressful. I didn’t have my room anymore, and I couldn’t record my songs as much because I had no privacy. I started to go down a darker path that I was already on towards the end of my military career. I started taking psychedelics and e-pills so I could forget what I was going through. There’s a bit more to it, but I’d rather keep the other parts to myself. Regardless, I never gave up and tried to take a better path and focus on audio and try to learn as much of it from school and jobs.
There were times when I was homeless for a little bit, but at times, I had friends help and let me crash at their place. It’s a whole mess. Currently, I’m slowly building up a clientele for mixing and recording and saving money to live on my own. Still in school as well. My biggest problem now is people need to pay more attention to me and my skills. It amazes me how much effort I put in to learn so many things, just not to be taken as seriously as I should be, but no worries. That pushes me even more to show out harder and stand on business. And that’s just how the game is.
I appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a music artist, audio engineer, and music producer. I want to say that I specialize more in the engineering side of things because that is what I enjoy the most, and it’s just fun learning all the cool gear and technical aspects of it and the history behind it all. What I’m most proud of and what sets me apart is that I can do all three. Not a lot of people can compose a whole beat that sounds good, then record themselves to sound like an actual artist, and then have the knowledge to mix and master their tracks professionally. And I’m only boasting myself like that because people don’t understand the amount of hours, days, months, and years I put in to learn all that. The sacrifices, the money spent investing in yourself, all of that. So yes, I’m going to keep boasting about myself because I am my own biggest supporter, and no one can stop me from making myself have the confidence to do so to keep going.
Please talk to us about happiness and what makes you happy.
Music, in general, makes me happy. Doing anything audio-related makes me happy. But to go into specifics, when I’m engineering, and I make a track sound exactly how the artist envisioned, that truly makes me happy. As the artist, when I finish a song, it sounds exactly how I intended, and people like it, that makes me happy as well. Creating music with friends, whether recording music or making beats, just the energy of it all is so enjoyable, like a drug. One day, I will run my own music studio business, the audio engineer for live concerts and sound design/mixing for film. I will have a Grammy for mixing as well. Travel the world. All of these will make me finally enjoy my life and be happy. If I ever have a kid, I will teach him everything I know so he can become successful and knowledgeable at a young age. Give the kid all the opportunities that I didn’t have growing up while I was being raised in poverty. That would ultimately make me happy.
Pricing:
- Recording Session – $60/hr
- Mixing – $100
- Beats – $50 (Lease)/ $100 (Exclusive)
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_xastro_/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@_XASTRO_
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/xastronyur
