Lindsey Stirling

If I like dubstep and electronic, why don\'t I make the violin fit me rather than making myself fit the violin?

I want to make dubstep something beautiful.

It is very unnatural to dance while playing the violin. I had to practice so hard to learn how to do it, but now it is part of my expression, and it comes naturally. I have to know a song perfectly before I can even begin to move.

I have been so incredibly blessed, and I just feel like my calling is to be a missionary and share the gospel... The Lord\'s given me a platform to stand on and an audience that is listening. I feel like it\'s so important to share what makes me happy.

I played the violin my whole life. I wanted to play from the time I was just a little kid, and I\'ve always loved dance as well. I wanted to make people smile. I wanted to add an extra energy to my playing and make it visual and make it unique and fun.

YouTube did more for me than \'America\'s Got Talent.\'

The truth is that several years ago, I suffered from depression. And I remember during this time, I basically fell into this hole where my life became cold, and it became gray, and I lost sight of everything that was important to me.

I tried to work with a record label; I tried to work with a booking agency, variety shows. I went to Vegas. I just tried everything I could think of, and nothing took. No one thought there was a place for my style and my music; it was just too different.

I think YouTube used to have a negative connotation, like it was the place where the rejects went and made careers, but I\'m proud to be YouTuber. I wanted to be in that first generation of YouTube stars who transitioned into the \'real world.\' It was a really good way to build my business.

As a kid, I was creative and unique, and I\'ve had that my whole life.

I started making music that I loved and was passionate and excited about, but it was really cool when I started touring to realize it\'s an extremely diverse group of people who come out. In the front row, I\'ll have everyone from a little girl in a frilly tutu, to rockers and gamers and older couples. I love it that it\'s just everybody.

I\'ve always had a fascination with pirates. You know, I\'ve written a song completely inspired by I want this to feel like pirates, you know, fighting together, made a music video about it, yada, yada.

I feel like when I\'m on stage and when I\'m performing - or I think when anybody is developing their talents and sharing it - I think you glow.

I love to perform not only music, but to make performances extremely visual, and create almost a magical fantasy. It\'s really an uplifting style of art that combines visuals and music in very dreamlike ways.

I still follow the lifestyle of the Mormon church. I try to go to church every Sunday even when I\'m on tour. It\'s not only my upbringing, but it helps me stay sane. It helps me remember my purpose and the overall picture of what is important to me and what makes me happy.

It is so cool to be able to stand as a witness of Christ and to be able to be proud of it and be part of His army.

A lot of people have told me along the way that my style and the music I do... is unmarketable. But the only reason I\'m successful is because I have stayed true to myself.

Coming from a YouTube perspective, a lot of times you kind of limit yourself and think, \'Oh, artists from the real world wouldn\'t want to work with someone who\'s made their career on YouTube.\' But more and more, I\'m realizing that artists from both sides are learning that we can benefit from each other.

I feel like my art is very eclectic. I have taken my favorite things - be that costume designing, fashion sense, music and video editing - and I threw them all into one big clump. And that\'s what I do.

Maker is extremely proactive and creative with their talent. They seem to have mastered the difficult task of giving attention to their smaller, growing channels while still being able to add value to their larger established channels - plus, with this partnership, I am one step closer to becoming a Disney princess!

All the things I do in my videos - the jumps, twirls and back bends - will also be onstage.

I can remember dancing around living room with my two sisters to the music of Paganini and Mozart. I can still remember my dad combing the newspaper, circling all the free concerts in town, and on the weekends, we would go as a family.

YouTube - holy cow! - I can do my career at my own pace. I didn\'t have anybody to tell me I wasn\'t ready, and I learned how to self-market and how to strategize. \'Spontaneous Me\' had already been up on iTunes, but besides my mom and grandma, no one bought it. Once it was up on YouTube, it went crazy.

For several years I had no idea that I had become anorexic. And I\'d be at places with people I cared about, but what I was thinking about was how much extra grease was on the pizza or the calories that I knew was in that shake.

A lot of these reality-TV shows people go on, they come off, and nothing happens. You never hear from them again. Fifteen seconds of fame is not the name of the game. No matter how big you break, or how many people you break in front of, you still have to slowly build a fan base to have anything loyal and lasting from people.

It\'s not like I try to be different, but every single person is unique, and every single person has special things to offer, and it\'s about embracing it and not being afraid of the fact that maybe you\'re different or quirky, but it\'s okay to be different, and it can be a wonderful thing.

My favorite thing about the success I\'ve found is that I get to share it with my family and the ones that I love.

Everybody has their demons that they face, and I went through a time when I thought it was impossible to love myself.

I was told by so many people that I wouldn\'t succeed because I was too different. Ironically, the very reason that people watch my channel and travel thousands of miles to see a show... is because it\'s different. God didn\'t send us to Earth to just blend in. We are here to share what makes us unique.

I just realized one day that I was so unhappy. And not only that, but I didn\'t even like the person that I was. I didn\'t even know who I was. And so \'Shatter Me\' is about first discovering what was under the shell and then learning to love that person that was under it. And then not being afraid to break free.