Composer and pianist Shelby Lock performs five evocative originals in this neoclassical piano adventure. However, not only did she write and play the entire album, but Lock was the sole recording engineer and producer for the project. Airborne is a solo album in the most literal sense of the term. Selected by the GRAMMY Foundation as an Audio Engineer at both the Los Angeles and New York sessions of GRAMMY Camp 2012, Lock was no stranger to recording. Since she was thirteen, she had been working in recording sessions and producing other artists out of her home-based Xenith Studios. She already boasts production and engineering credits for several releases on iTunes, but Airborne is her debut as a solo artist. Lock has been composing since the age of eleven and has studied classical piano for nine years. Although most of her earliest compositions were for piano, she soon began to favor writing for larger ensembles such as orchestras, rock combos, and choir. Limiting herself to a single instrument came to seem too "restrictive." For three years, she didn't complete a single solo piano work. However, Lock continued to study piano and didn't give up. In February 2012, she found herself sitting at the piano with an idea for a piano-driven pop song, but she was frustrated that the lyrics weren't coming. Little did Shelby know that she was beginning a new chapter in her composition career. This wordless pop-song became Airborne's title track—the first song completed out of the album. Several months later, after returning from eighteen intense and inspiring days at GRAMMY Camp, Lock felt she was finally ready to attempt a piano album. She decided she wouldn't wait any longer for piano compositions to come—she would sit down and make them. Although she had gained confidence in her abilities as a composer, Shelby still felt uncertain at first about the audio engineering aspects of making a piano album. Still, she wanted to try to do the entire album herself—recording and mixing included. The uncertainty did not stop the teen from setting off on a yearlong quest to make a professional-quality album by herself. "Piano is one of the hardest instruments to record," Lock explains. "There are so many subtleties in the tone, and interactions between the strings and the soundboard, plus reflections from the lid make recording even more challenging." She says that she found herself over her head in the technical problems at times. "I would experiment with a mic technique that I read about online, and then I would try it, and it wouldn't sound right. I always wanted to know why something didn't work, and as a result, I found myself delving into acoustical physics and solving equations. Recording piano is like an iceberg; nothing is ever as small or as simple as it seems at first glance."