Stephanie Bricker
Student Life Editor
Messiah Dreams Big is a new column that seeks to give students a platform to share their dreams and empower their fellow students. Abigail La Bianca is a sophomore broadcasting and media productions major with a minor in music and worship. She is looking to use her time at Messiah and other music schools to learn ways to change the music industry. She wants to write songs for musicians you hear on the radio– songs that go beyond what we are so used to hearing and connect us together.
What big dream do you have?
My dream is to be a music producer, actively involved in the music-making process. My ideal career would be to write and record music for upcoming artists–music that speaks from the heart and isn’t just about the shallow things in life, like living while we’re young or how much you might want to have sex with that hot boy across the bar. I don’t want to write about any of that. I want to write the real stuff, the crap that people go through but no one wants to talk about, like abuse, anger, depression, loneliness, how we feel like no one will ever love us back as much as we love them, even though we pour our hearts and our time into their lives and well-being every day. Not everyone has that luxury of drinking the night away or making out with a handsome stranger. But we all know pain. That’s how we should be connecting with people.
Does that have anything to do with your major? How will you use your major?
Because Messiah doesn’t have an audio engineering major, I had to go with the next best thing that would guarantee me a job if my hopes of getting into the music business don’t actually take place. I guess my broadcasting major is my fallback in a sense. Many people ask me why I’m not a music major and that’s because I don’t want to be in a position where I am stuck teaching music. That’s not what I’m looking to do.
How long have you had this dream?
I’ve been writing music my entire life, so that has always been a dream of mine. My biggest inspiration to get into music was Adam Young from Owl City. The dream to work as a producer began when I was twelve. I got my first 4-track Tascam recorder for Christmas and began to create rough tracks. Within three years, I had created a small studio in a dark attic of my old house. A piano, guitar, recorder, mixer, drum machine, glockenspiel and my imagination were all I had to fuel my passion.
What are your plans for making this dream come true?
Next semester I am going to the Contemporary Music Center in Nashville, Tennessee. I will be learning the ropes of the technical and recording side of the industry. My peers and I will be in charge of planning an entire tour. With the experience I’m going to gain there, I hope to make connections in Nashville and hopefully move there at some point, where I will be able to attend the Recording Connection Music Production School for their training program after college. It’s just an incomplete plan, and it has its holes. But it’s exciting because that means there’s room for improvisation.