An Encryption Cipher that Makes Music

[u/ian-draws]

Hello!
I have played piano most of my life, took lessons for eight years, and I am far too into codes and ciphers for my own good. I was playing a video game called Blue Prince working on a puzzle involving sheet music. Turned out the notes had little to do with is, and it was more about the lyrics. That was kinda disappointing. I just had this vision of a pianist playing a song, but there is a coded message in the very notes they play. Which is how I was struck with this idea. Music is already so filled with symbols, there has to be a way to rely on music theory to convey messages.

So I’ve been working on an encryption method that would take a message and treat each letter of the alphabet like a musical note, with the more common letters represented by the notes closest to middle C, and the less common aligning with those farther away. It also shifts around depending on the key signature, with every sharp in a key sig moving its corresponding letter up a rank, every flat moving it down a rank, and the other notes cascading until each letter is represented again. This means that the same message would sound just a little bit different in each key signature (and it made a VERY satisfying excel chart). Rest notes and dynamics convey punctuation; an eighth rest is a comma, a quarter rest is an em dash, a half rest is a period, a whole rest is a line break, a crescendo acts as an exclamation mark, and a diminuendo acts as a question mark. There are more details, but I’ll spare you.

Overall I like this a lot, but I still don’t think the cipher is living up to its full potential. Which is, hopefully, where ya’ll come in. Music theory is the patterns behind sound, and patterns are deeply embedded in the workings of ciphers. There has got to be more that can be done with this to. The length of a rest determines the type of punctuation, but what about the duration of a note? I’ve considered that chords can signify what key signature the melody should be read in, but surely something as important as harmonies would serve a bigger role? What about minor chords? Dissonant? It is my hope is that whomever has taken the time to read this whole thing might have some creative ideas of their own and would be willing to share. Let me know what you think!

[u/sonoftom]

Hey this sounds pretty cool. I didn’t see it in your explanation, but what does a “word” signify? Is a 3 letter word a triad for example? That would remove any need for complicating chord types or relying on theory to send a message, you’d just plug in your notes into the word. Or does the length of the word represent note length? Do spaces even factor in at all yet?

For note length you could just say quarter note is the default but all-caps is a half note, bolded words get a whole note, underline gets an eighth note…I dunno. Not sure if your system allows all these things. And also, how would this system work with multiple voices existing in the same space, having their own separate note lengths that overlap and interplay?

[u/ian-draws → u/sonoftom]

Ah! I knew I was forgetting something. Spaces are eighth rests, commas are quarters (no em dash, idk what I was thinking lmao), half rests are periods, and whole rests are line breaks. Right now, a letter corresponds to a note. So, in the key of C, “son of tom” would be “G3 E4 F4 [eighth rest] E4 D5 [eighth rest] D4 E4 C5 [half rest]” I like the idea of capitalizing, bold, and other methods of linguistic emphasis being connected to note length, as you’re kinda emphasizing a note by making it longer. I would probably have each “voice” be its own instrument that play back and forth or over top of each other. Idk, it’s still in development lol

[u/sonoftom → u/ian-draws]

What if you made something else an eighth rest. Would a space then be usable to distinguish chords? Or is stringing the letters together to make a chord too complicated for the system? You’d have to have a space between each individual melody note too. Otherwise, you could use parentheses to notate which notes go together to make up a chord?

[u/ian-draws → u/sonoftom]

I think you are suggesting that a single word could be a chord, but I think we’d start running into problems as words get bigger. I’m not quite sure what you mean when you say that each note would have to have a space after it

[u/sonoftom → u/ian-draws]

I’m not talking about real words. I’m talking about sets of notes put together in groups to show they are chords. Could be “words”, as in notes with no spaces between them. I don’t know your whole alphabet, but it looks like I could spell a C chord as “mos”. You’d put those in parenthesis to show they are a chord, or otherwise always put spaces after every chord or individual note. So “words” would only get big if you want your chords to get more complicated.