.

.

 

What about photos? ^^

 

I think that might be able to fall under "Art." Remember it has to be Maple related though. xD

 

Oh you're right. I didn't notice the "Maple related" part .

 

What about a picture book? With either drawings or SS's whatever with some words to tell a story?

 

What about clay models? Can i take them a photo and upload it?

 

@Nessa
You need to send me more screenshots of when you're dead so I can make a collage for this. That way Nikki's happy that I participate, I get to win something, and you get to celebrate your glory

 

@carcrash You could do something like this for a music cover xD

 

LameAF

 

Got my daily dose of unhealthy, deafening headphone noise and lolz at the same time. It was glorious.

 

Here is my cover of Lost Stars!
Hope you guys enjoy this video

 

Hellloo this contest is still ongoing right? how do i pm you my submission? sorry for noob question ^^;;

 

Might join if dance choreography/freestyle submissions are allowed, no other artistic talents

 

yay

 

BIG RESPECT

 

IGN: Shiroshi
Category: Music/Writing?

So this is about as far from MapleRoyals as it gets, but I felt that at least part of the community would enjoy a personal anecdote on classical music (as well as some recordings of yours truly playing in concert as part of an orchestra). One thing that might need some clarification within my anecdote is the concept of a "white sheet."

White sheets were the main form of communication between orchestra members and our maestro, Benjamin Zander. They had no particular assigned "prompt" or length - we could make them as long/in depth or short/impersonal as desired. My "anecdote" is constructed as a longer/more personal type of "white sheet" written for the conductor.

Dear Maestro Zander,

Though I was never able to write a one in person, I've been blessed with an opportunity to write about my experience as a clarinetist of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Thus, this will be, to me, a sort of “first white sheet.” I had written short words of thanks and gratitude for having been a part of the orchestra already, but in this document, I hope to tell a story about music and those who make music.

I come from a family with a mother who majored in piano performance and a father tone-deaf beyond help. With such polarized backgrounds, it’s no surprise that I didn’t have two sets of warm, reassuring hands pushing me towards the realm of music from an early age. While my mother taught piano lessons daily in Korea, my father was a traditional corporate employee – working every day for countless hours on semiconductor machinery designing and other forms of mechanical engineering too complex for my five-year-old self (and perhaps even now). As a child growing up in such an environment, I never paid much attention to the individual faces of the students who came to take lessons from my mother, but one thing remains painfully etched into the recesses of my memory: the lack of happiness emanating from all the children that played piano under my mother’s instruction.

While my mother exhibited and exuded a true passion and contagious brilliance whenever she opened the piano and began to play, all of the nameless faces that came for piano lessons twice a week progressed from basic Hanon exercises to Liszt preludes only in practice, not in heart or soul. I took such a trait as a sign that music perhaps meant something different for my generation than it did for my parents, something that entailed coercion and force rather than an endeavor inspired by love. It was because of this precaution that I refused to continue with the little piano lessons that my mother had tried to seemingly impose upon me as a five-year old child. And until I moved to Plano, Texas as a fourth grader, I neither touched a single instrument nor sang. To many of my elementary school friends, I was a songbird mother’s mute baby chick.

Many years down the road, I came into contact with a clarinet teacher within our church community. This event triggered a chain of events for which I feel boundless gratitude and fortune. Since picking up my beginning-model clarinet, I realized that music for my generation wasn’t something just imposed onto children by parents seeking to “educate” and “prepare their children” for one-time events in the future, such as college applications. Perhaps it was that nobody from my childhood neighborhood demonstrated passion for music, but before playing the clarinet, I failed to realize that there were still children and young adults out there who truly took music to a spiritual and personal level of existence. After such a discovery, I devoted much of my time trying to craft my technical abilities and learn to “phrase musically” and sound like someone “older than my age.” Yet even with such a changed mindset, I had still failed to realize a deeper meaning to music that existed beyond the individual satisfaction of having growing mastery over a single instrument. Throughout my high school experience, I was a member of many distinct ensembles – symphony orchestras, chamber groups, wind ensembles, symphonic bands, 300-member marching bands, and more. Having played with groups locally, regionally, and even on a state-level through All-State, I believed that I had learned what it meant to be a musician not just individually but also as a team player.

I now know how wrong I was.

After having been in the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and playing Shostakovich 5 in Carnegie Hall, I realized that the culmination of my experience thus far in the orchestra has been both overwhelming and unbelievably enlightening. I still remember the conversation we had after the audition – the one in which I came in with the mindset of forfeiting the spot as a clarinetist in the orchestra. As a student at a school reputed to be academically rigorous, competitive, and driven by measurements of success often defined by number of network connections, wealth, or fame, I felt the pressure to be in sync with what was commonly perceived as happiness and “rational decision-making.” Even now, I tell myself that the decision to apply solely to academia-based schools rather than auditioning at conservatories was a “smart” decision, but I can’t help but grieve the growing mindset that music is a career path in which the opportunities only become smaller and smaller in number.

And in a sense, such a statement holds a degree of sad truth – the number of professional orchestras has been declining; patronage for such orchestras has been declining; the demographics of symphony orchestra patrons demonstrate a shocking lack of young classical music lovers. However, to me symphony orchestras and classical music are not to be viewed as venues for careers but as ways in which people bond over a common passion. As I played through the Shostakovich on Friday, I felt an intense rush of emotion at every climactic moment, a sudden urge to not breathe in a subtle moment of sorrow, and limitless happiness and triumph in moments of glory. During Friday’s concert, I was able to really see the meaning of a phrase I had used in the past but never quite understood or felt – that music is a form of art with a palette of infinite colors and emotions. Not only is music something that can be understood across cultural barriers as a universal language, but also its potential for creating both subtleties and bold statements renders it the most powerful form of communication and bonding that exists.

When I first talked to Kayla during the rehearsal one week before our concert, I found myself to be the first in witnessing her reaction to her grandmother’s tragic passing. I didn’t know quite how to react. I barely knew her, and here I was with the responsibility of making sure that Kayla, who I might not have known for a long time or very intimately, found a ray of hope. During the concert, I felt and shivered during Kayla’s solo at rehearsal 79 – feeling tears of sorrow and a wave of cold loneliness. During Nick’s solo soon afterward in the third movement, I could feel the pain of mutual loss in which he and I both experienced the passing of a friend two years ago. At rehearsal 90, my heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest, and such a deep, wounded, dark emotion was later uplifted by the glory of rehearsal 110 in the fourth movement. As someone who, in the past, always favored specific parts of any musical piece and deemed such parts as “favorite moments,” I had never imagined the day would come in which one single piece yielded not 2 or 3 favorite moments but a continual stream of intense, palpable emotion. As someone who realized the beauty of such a moment, I felt the drive necessary to contribute my part not just as a clarinetist, but a musical voice ready to sing and cry with every other member of the BPYO. I found myself in one sense the leader of the BPYO clarinet section, but in another, a once-muted songbird now free. BPYO is special not just for the level of music making that occurs at each and every rehearsal, but also for the pool of passion from which its members derive the heart-felt, profound, and subtle art that I can proudly say reflects the possibility that growing leaders can work together and serve each other as equals.

I truly hope to learn more from this experience and that BPYO will continue to inspire members of the community. Perhaps one day, classical music will not be seen as a growing antique of the past but as an art form that engenders a greater understanding of community and, of course, more shining eyes.

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/l6f27i3yleb6cpz/03_Symphony_No._5_in_D_minor,_Op..mp3
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/elio05igmxrocfn/04_Symphony_No._5_in_D_minor,_Op..mp3
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/aabhvsxb8ls8an6/05_Symphony_No._5_in_D_minor,_Op..mp3

P.S. I'm not sure why Mediafire tagged some of the recordings as the Philadelphia Orchestra (I assure you it's my youth orchestra haha), but for the doubtful, I've also attached a link to the website that sells the recording, and you can compare the music samples - the above three links are movements 3-5, two of which (3 and 5 in particular) pertain to my anecdote.
http://www.linnrecords.com/recording-shostakovich-symphony-no-5.aspx

Hope you enjoy! Apologies for the mega-long post

 

OMG

 

IGN: Nightz
Category: Art



I wish I had started this earlier, but you reap what you sow!
I apologize for my 3rd grade coloring skills and my crappy character designs, but I hope this picture makes people remember the happier days back in GMS.