Grammy-Award winning and multi-platinum recording artist, songwriter, composer, poet, and visual artist Serj Tankian has teamed up with non-profit cultural organization Creative Armenia to release “7 Notes Challenge,” a compilation album highlighting some of the most notable submissions from a songwriting challenge posed to artists worldwide.
The 17-song album is now available on all major streaming, and download, platforms across the globe, Asbarez reports.
The unique experiment was originally announced back in October of 2017, with a basic premise and a $5,000 prize.
“The challenge is simple. You’ve got these seven notes that you have to start with, “explained Tankian. “Your first seven notes of your composition have to be these seven notes. You can make a jazz song, a rock song, a symphony…whatever type of music that you want, but it can’t be longer than three minutes. The rest is up to you.”
When the submission deadline was reached, Creative Armenia, who hosted the competition via a website, received over 2,000 unique submissions in a plethora of genres from all corners of the world. Tankian and a panel of other notable judges — SOAD band mate/bassist Shavo Odadjian, Sebu Simonian of Capital Cities, acclaimed jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan, Dean of Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA Judith Smith and honored composer Vahagn Hayrapetyan — were then tasked to listen through the overwhelming number of submissions to select a winner.
That they did, and in fact, they ended up crowning two winning submissions — splitting the $5,000 prize equally.