Author: Mahea Lee

  • 5 Practice Tips for Busy Lives

    5 Practice Tips for Busy Lives

    For a brief few years in college, I got to treat music as a full-time job, devoting 40+ hours a week to musical improvement. I lived ten minutes from the practice rooms and had very few responsibilities, so I could practice as much as sleep and school would allow. Now that I’m a full-fledged grown-up…

    Read more

  • Shea Rose: Using Music to Change the World

    Shea Rose: Using Music to Change the World

    Photo credit: Conor Doherty On stage, Shea Rose is breathtakingly talented and charmingly charismatic. She exudes power and confidence through a presence that somehow radiates both comfortable ease and careful coordination. Offstage, she is easy to talk to and surprisingly humble—especially when you consider some of her achievements. From being a spokesmodel for CoverGirl to…

    Read more

  • 3 Practice Tips for Short Attention Spans

    3 Practice Tips for Short Attention Spans

    “Practice makes perfect.” While I can’t necessarily say I’ve heard any “perfect” music yet, I will certainly attest to the fact that putting in the time will improve any musician’s sound. Throughout my college and post-degree years, I’ve heard people talk about how they “hit the shed” for days at a time — stopping only…

    Read more

  • Jared Yee on What Makes the Best Solos

    Jared Yee on What Makes the Best Solos

    There aren’t many musicians who are able to balance organic emotion and technical prowess in their playing. Most of us lean in one direction or the other. However, in the time I’ve known him, I have never seen Jared play a solo that wasn’t equal parts instinct and practiced skill. As a performer, he is…

    Read more

  • Happy Valentine’s Day: The Love Story of Robert and Clara Schumann

    Happy Valentine’s Day: The Love Story of Robert and Clara Schumann

      “You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you’ve looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.” – Robert Schumann   I’m a little ashamed to say I didn’t shed a single tear when I saw The Notebook. On top of that, I fell asleep about two-thirds of the…

    Read more

  • Six Tips for Musicians in New Cities

    Six Tips for Musicians in New Cities

    The summer of 2012 was pivotal for my husband and me. We had loved living in Boston, but the time had come to move on. Between the two of us, we had a pair of music school degrees, decades of instrumental experience, resumés that were useless outside of the entertainment world, and a handful of enticing prospects…

    Read more

  • How to Keep Your Musical Resolutions

    How to Keep Your Musical Resolutions

    Stockings are coming down, crumpled wrapping paper’s being shoved into recycling bins, and people worldwide are skeptically patting their winter weight in anticipation of the coming year. While we whole-heartedly support your decisions to start taking cross-acro-zum-fit classes and maintaining a strict paleo-free-tarian diet, why not add something painless to your resolution list? Here are two…

    Read more

Ryan Lott: Designing Sample-Based Instruments