First time with orchestra

Hello!
Today I'm going to be writing more about how and what I feel than really giving any kind of advice really.
As you can see from the title, I will be performing first time in my life as a soloist with orchestra.  Tomorrow! I had 2 rehearsals so far and both went good so all I gotta do now is stay calm, practice some more and focus on what's important. Sounds too easy and too simple, right? But let me tell you from my experience: it's definitely not. At least not for me. There's always that what if  that's going on in my head. What if I lose my intonation, what if my bow breaks, what if my srtring breaks, what if I forget the notes, what if I mess up and make everything sound horrible, what if I dissapoint everybody and, most importantly, myself? Zigeunerweisen is quite a tricky piece. You can easily get lost, you can easily make a mistake. I can not even believe it's going to be ME that's going to perform with a professional orchestra. Alone. Tomorrow. I'm so nervous but I'll try to calm down before it affects my playing... Pray for me, please!
Thanks for reading!
I'll tell you all how it went on Sunday (if I'm still alive by then lol)

Tired of performing

Ay humans waddup

I have really been busy these past few months and this chaos is about to last for another 2~3 months. I'm so tired of performing, practicing for hours and hours a day, constantly being in touch with 62653 professors. I guess sometimes I forget that I'm only 17 and I should be living a good carefree life but it ain't happening, at least not for now.
Music is such a sacrifise.... SAAAAVE ME Y'ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stage Fright

I'm kind of bad at these blog things but whatever I'm still going to try my best and make you learn something from it.

Today I'm going to talk about a very common thing that I believe every musician and human being has experienced at some point of their life. For us musicians, it's like our enemy, our worst friend. 

Common questions are: what is stage fright?, why do we have stage fright? and how to stop it? 

Well, first of all I'm not an expert or a professional; I'm a student. But for the past two years I've learned how not to think about it and at the end not feel it which improved my performance in all aspects. 

Stage fright is a fear or an anxiety that we experience, in most cases, when we are doing something that is very important for us, something that we care about and at the end something that might even determinate our future. 

Having stage fright is nothing wrong, in fact it's a normal thing. It can even help us and make our performance better. However, in some people it can be very expressed and present whenever they do something that matters, for example when having a concert. 

How do we know when we have a stage fright? 

It's definitely not a hard thing to recognize. The one's usually feeling nervous and scared at that time, the symptoms the person experiences are usually the ones that include shaking (voice, hands, legs, etc.), racing heart, blushing, stiffness (hands, fingers, legs, etc.), nausea, rashes, excessive sweating (face, neck, hands, etc...), cold hands, sudden warmth, dry mouth, dizziness and even fever in some cases. If you experience(d) any of these symptoms on your important day or event, it means you have a stage fright. And don't worry because you are not alone in this. Even some great artists still suffer from it. 

Why do we have stage fright?

In my opinion it's because you care about what you have to do/are doing at that very moment. It's something that's important to you, you want to show your best self, but also because you, in some cases, have a respect for the audience that's listening to you. If you didn't care about them or about whether you'll make mistakes or not, most likely you wouldn't be so scared about it. In the other hand, sometimes we have stage fright because we feel like we didn't prepare well or not worked enough on the project we are representing. Well, being nervous can just make things worse so I'm going to give you a few tips and advices on how to get rid of it.

How to stop it?

First of all, always prepare yourself to the maximum, for us musicians it's all those hard places such as passages, double steps etc. You have to make it all very secure so be sure that you practice enough and effectively. Next thing is that you have to have in mind that the mistakes might and can always happen, you have to extra prepare yourself on things such as those. (Tip: Whenever you don't practice but you are doing something else, take a 1 minute break, hands on the instrument and play once just that one or few risky and hard bars. After you've done it you can go do something else again.)

Last thing is to act wisely and steadily on the scene (or before). Do not chat with others too much, especially if they are showing how nervous they are. It will just make you feel worse. Always have a bottle of water just in case you get dehidrated because it does happen sometimes. Do not, under any circumstances, overpractice right before your performance. This can actually ruin everything you've ever done with that piece. Last 15-30 minutes before your performance should pass without playing, being at a quiet place where you can stay fully concentrated. Before that you can go through your repertoire (only critical places!!!) very slowly and calmly one time, do not play too quickly or else you might end up messing it all on the scene. Before you get on the stage, remember - it's just you and your instrument. Your time to shine. Your time to create. Your time to show everyone your best, how much you can do. Do not peek or count how many people there are in audience, you shouldn't care about it. You play for them, to make them entertained, but you also play for yourself, right? 

I know this might be the hardest thing to do but really try to focus only on music. And remember: A few mistakes do not make your performance bad - playing it with no pleasure and no feelings makes it bad! We are human creatures, not machines. 

Good luck!

I promise!

I promise I will write more on here from now on. I was just so busy but I know that's not the best excuse. I'm sorry!
Today I will be playing Zigeunerweisen in front of the audience for the fist time. To be quite honest I don't even know if I care about it so much or not. I'm trying to remain calm and give my best. That's all. And at the end of the day only your opinion matters and no one else's... However, I know I have to give my best to entertain them all too, being a musician is a tough job actually. The fact that others  think we just play a little and have nothing else to do, no stress, no responsibility is very ignorant. We are not in 15th century! Actually, our job is to make everyone in this world entertained, to bring back memories, to bringhten everyone's day yet most of the people don't appreciate it at all. They will never know how does it feel to stand in front of hundreds and thousands of people, playing for them (and for yourself). It's stressful, but there's no better feeling than the one when you see you made all those people fascinated and happy. That's our mission.
Take care everyone and please pray for me, I have to make this day special to myself and everyone else.

Thank you so much for reading!!


listening to: The Lion King - I Just Can't Wait To Be King
reading: The Great Gatsby
mood: feeling lucky

2014 Violinists Holiday Giveaway Winner Announcement

Thank you for all  1,343 entries! First I saw only like 51 comment or something and I was sad cause I thought only a couple of you guys have entered... Then I saw there's more but YouTube put it as a ''spam comments''. But don't worry because I was counting ALL THE COMMENTS!

I was disappointed about some people that didn't follow the rules and just wrote randomly comments - those were deleted.  #ilanagu3..., #janciebowv... and #Tim Lee were blocked because of the rude comments and unfollowing my instructions!  

All of the comments that were posted after 20, January 2014 (I tried to include all time zones so there's no problems!) were deleted because of not respecting my rules. 

I hope you guys won't do this on my next giveaway/contest! 

***Being a sore loser and commenting negatively on the results/winners will lead to you being blocked by MagicalTalesOfWolves, causing you not to be able to watch our videos OR participating in future competitions.***

I wish you good luck!

This giveaway is 100% honest and fair, with my user name, MagicalTalesOfWolves, I guarantee that the winner is picked fairly without doubt!

CONGRATULATIONS TO #komichinyan (A) and #Annu Sklyarenko (B). Please message me within 24 hours, or new winner is going to be picked.
Thank you for participation!

MTOW

SCS's GIVEAWAY

SugarCharmShop has a giveaway!
 Make sure you participate♥
hERE'S THE LINK:  SugarCharmShop has a giveaway! Make sure you participate♥ http://www.scs-craft.com/2013/01/giveaway-efcolor.html

TODAY

Hi! Long time no see (I know -.-)
BUT! I have some awesome news^^ Why I haven't been recently posting any videos is because I was to busy with both school (as always. :() but, I had a competition with my violin quartet. Wanna guess which prize we won? 2ND!!! ^^
I was so happy, because we really played horrible but still we won a very good prize with high points ( 97,14 ) which tells you how awesome we are. >v<
Before the competition I was very nervous, but since we played at 22:15 pm, I was so tired I eventually stopped being nervous and my stage fright stopped. How weird, right?!
Now I have a competition in January 3rd, I'll be playing Massenet Meditation Thais, Mussorgsky Hopak... And after that competition I'm going to play Vieuxtemps violin concerto no. 5!!! (I'm playing violin for 3 years for all of you who've been wondering) Should I consider myself as a prodigy?! ^^ heheh...
I'm tired and I have 8 EXAMS THIS WEEK going to kill myself, + concerto in theatre. -____-'' WISH ME LUCK! ^^ Good night