April 2024 challenge: Plot Plucks

There's an element that has been deeply embedded in our culture since the dawn of society. This element significantly influences our lives, shaping our understanding of the universe, guiding how we interact with others, and playing a crucial role in forming our identities. This essential element is storytelling.

Think about the stories shared by our grandparents, the vast array of narratives found in books and films, or the personal stories we tell about our own lives. These stories are not just forms of entertainment; they are foundational to our cultural and personal identity.

A distinguished Uruguayan author named Eduardo Galeano once said, "Scientists say we are made of atoms, but I believe we are made of stories." This viewpoint offers profound insight: while our physical bodies are composed of matter and atoms, our psyche—our essence—is nurtured and shaped by the stories we hold dear and share.

Let's recognize and celebrate the power of stories in this challenge.

The challenge

Today, we're inviting you to think about your all-time favorite story. It could be from a book, movie, video game, a tale you've heard, or even a story about yourself. Once you've picked your story, try this out:

List all the characters in the story and assign a musical instrument to each one. This will help you decide what instrumentation to use.
Next, pinpoint the key elements in the story apart from the characters, such as the weather, the social setting, a historical event, etc. For each of these elements, choose a specific musical notation, like the time signature. This will help you shape your score. For instance, if your story is about a fisherman, you could assign a time signature to represent the sea. Then, whenever the sea's condition changes in the story, you can adjust the time signature to reflect that change.
Lastly, plan out how you'll turn the story into a music piece using Flat.

Let's see how you can transform your favorite story into music!

Instructions

The composition must be an original piece, specifically created from scratch for this challenge in Flat. We will review the score's history to ensure compliance with this rule. Submissions that do not adhere to this requirement will not be considered.
In the description of your scores, provide a summary of your story, detailing which instruments represent which characters and any other significant decisions you made for your composition.
Collaborations are not allowed this time.
The song must be 1-3 minutes long. We know this is a very limited time but we're getting so many submissions lately, we want to make sure we can carefully review each of them❣️
You can only submit one score.
Deadline: May 1st. No late submissions.
Remember we can not consider private scores.

Scoring system

✅ Accuracy (30)

How accurately the song represents the story according to your score's description.

✅ Engagement (30)

How well your song captures the listener's attention for its entire duration.

✅ Transitions (30)

How smooth and well-designed the song's transitions are (e.g. modulations).

✅ Founder Enjoyment (10)

How much the founders of Tutteo, the company behind Flat, like your piece.

If you win more than once during the period of the yearly subscription you won, the prize will be applied as follows:

You can give away the yearly subscription to a person who does not have a premium subscription yet of your choice.
If you decide to keep the prize for yourself, we will add one extra month to the annual subscription you already won, and the second place will be awarded the annual subscription prize.

Bonus points

Subscribe to our YouTube channel (2 points).
If you are a free user (5 points).

🥇 The score with the most points wins!

We'll announce the winner on May 10th.

Prize

🏆 One-year Premium subscription.

Additional incentives

Promotion in our blog and social media.
Special badge for a year showing you as the winner of this month's challenge!

Submissions

Please send your submission 👉🏽 here.

Submissions received after the deadline will not be considered.

⚠ Private scores cannot be reviewed! Please make your score public before submitting it.

After submitting, we will manually add your score to the Challenge tab on the Flat Community Page. This isn't an automatic process, so you'll need to have a bit of patience.

We can't wait to hear what you come up with!