Bakitone
 
Welcome to New World of Music Competitions by Bakitone International.  If you think of Bakitone’s web site as an orchestra, and each of our over 900 listed competitions as instruments in the orchestra, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what we have set out to accomplish for you. Though Bakitone.com is easy to use and pretty intuitive, we would like to offer to take you on a little tour that may improve your experience in the future.  After all, every orchestra needs a conductor!
 
Select an Instrument
 
Choose your favorite instrument… starting with the one you play.  Selecting a musical instrument will take you to the competitions for that specialty.  You can choose it from the intro page, or within the site choose it on the upper part of any page.  Just click on the instrument you are interested in, right above the competition headings.

Competitions
 
Each competition in this section has age requirements that are usually for musicians over 18 years of age.  If you are interested in junior competitions, you can always select the “Junior Competitions” tab from the upper menu.
In the upper part of this page you can see a counter.  To the left of the counter is the instrument you chose, and you can see the total number of competitions for this instrument and the countries in which the events take place.  It’s up to you to enter and win!
On the middle part of the screen you can select a country to see what competitions it hosts. Once you click on the name of the country, you are presented with a list of all competitions in our database, from the current year, from the recent past, and for the years to come.  We try to make our site as comprehensive as possible, so that is it easy for you to use it, and saves you the time of trying to sort through competitions by hand.
 
Calendar
 
If you want to know what is coming up during a specific period of time, just choose a year from the calendar on the left.  Use the arrows on either side of the current year to take you to different years.
When you see a small circle inside a white box to the left of a month, this means that competitions are being held during this month. If you click on one of these months, you now are presented with a list of competitions for a particular instrument, in a particular country, for a particular year and month. 
You can reverse your search by clicking on that month once more, which deselects it and shows you the list of competitions for the whole year again.
You can also search by clicking on the country name, just below the word Competitions.  This brings up all competitions in all years for your chosen country.
Clicking on the word Competitions at the top returns you to the previous page.
This method of navigation works exactly the same way for any instrument you see on bakitone.com and for Junior Competitions as well.   Take it from your orchestra conductor, because we’re here to help!

Search Option
 
If you don’t know where the competition takes place you can try finding it using the search function. Just type the name of the competition and you will see the results for your keywords.
In case you are wondering why more than one competition has exactly the same name, the answer is simple: the search shows you results for both the Competitions and Junior Competitions for your selected instrument. So you might take your younger brother or sister along.
Let’s say you are interested in competitions only in Vienna, or Paris. Well, then type “Vienna” or “Paris” for a list of only the competitions taking place in that city.

All Competitions
 
Clicking this link shows you the list of all competitions for juniors and adults, by date.  Use the page numbers on the right to navigate. The calendar works like a charm here, too.  Let's continue le Tour!
 
Hot News
 
At the bottom of the main screen, you can view the most recent news and important messages from the competitions.  Check back regularly for updates about your events, postponements, deadlines being moved up, etc.  You don’t want to miss competing because you got the date wrong, and these events change all the time.
This is also the section where you can find other interesting and helpful news, such as a release of a new CD, a concert or a festival in your town, a luthier (who can help your instrument to recover from cold weather or make a needed repair), or your colleague giving a recital near you. The list goes on, so be sure to check Hot News every time you’re on the Bakitone site!
 
Difficulty Level
 
We want you to enjoy, as well as win, the competitions you enter.  Keep in mind that in all sections of Bakitone, competitions are sorted by difficulty level.  This difficulty level has been “awarded” by professional musicians, past competition winners, teachers, professors, etc.  These are jury members of all ages who we personally know or who are trusted colleagues who have offered their opinion. It will certainly give you a pretty good idea before you start preparing for a competition.  One more bit of advice about the difficulty level: the best competition is not always the most difficult one; it is the one you gain the most from.  Did you get experience or monetary satisfaction?  It may be the circumstance of a particular situation. 
We hope you enjoyed this tour with your orchestra conductor for Bakitone!  Good luck and start exploring bakitone.com, getting ready for your next challenge.
 
How to Contact Us
 
If you wish to contact us, please do so by e-mail or use our contact form. You’ll see where to click by looking at the top right corner.

We look forward to hearing from you!