October has arrived, and we couldn’t resist creating a spooky Halloween-themed challenge for the month! This time, we’re stepping into the eerie world of haunted houses. It’s your chance to craft chilling melodies, spine-tingling harmonies, and capture the mysterious atmosphere of a haunted house. Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned composer, this challenge is sure to spark your creativity.

Ready to open the doors to the unknown and let your imagination run wild? Let’s dive in!

The challenge

For this challenge, imagine and design your own haunted house. Think about its different rooms, shadowy corners, and how someone would feel walking through it. In the score’s description, tell us about your haunted house, then compose a piece that captures the experience of someone exploring it.

Instructions

  • It must be an original composition, 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, you must describe your haunted house.
  • We accept collaborations this time (3 composers max.).
  • The song must be 1-3 minutes long. We know this is a very limited time, but we're receiving so many submissions lately, we want to ensure we can carefully review each of them.
  • You can only submit one score.
  • Deadline: October 22nd. No late submissions will be accepted.
  • Remember, we cannot consider private scores.

Scoring system

✅ Accuracy (20 points)

How accurately the song represents your haunted house.

✅ Engagement (20 points)

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

✅ Transitions (20 points)

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

✅Creativity (20 points)

The originality and inventiveness of your piece.

✅ Emotional Impact (15 points)

The ability of the composition to evoke the intented emotions.

✅ Founders Enjoyment (5 points)

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

  • Compose a march for a full brass ensemble (5 points).
  • Use unexpected dissonance and minor key variations to provoke a spooky twist (5 points).
  • Create a 4-part canon where the harmony builds into a chilling climax. Write it in a way that each voice imitates the others while growing more dissonant and chaotic over time (5 points).

🥇 The score with the most points wins!

We'll announce the winner on October 31st.

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!