Solfa Cipher is a music cipher for encoding text messages as musical melodies. Simply type your message in the box.
To extract the solfa cipher from an encrypted melody, you must determine the scale degrees and unit placement for each note based on the original §Key. Take the following example:
By itself, Tune-116 is unreadable without knowing the original Solfa §Key. The written clef, key signature and time signature for the tune may be a decoy:
 
Even if the clef and key signature in the decoy were correct, you wouldn't know for certain which note was Do. A key signature with two flats, for example, could be Bb Major (in which the case the first note of the tune appears to be So); G Minor (first note = Le); C Dorian (first note = Me); etc.
In this case, §Key-116 shows us that the tune is meant to be read in treble clef, in D Major, with an 8th note unit for the count placements.
 
Using the §Key, you can match the correct solfege syllables for each note on the staff (Do=D, Re=E, Mi=F#, Fa=G, So=A, La=B, Ti=C#) and parse the rhythms into counts of four 8th notes. Beware that not all cipher tunes start on the downbeat. §Key 116 indicates that the first note starts on count 3•
The extracted cipher symbols can then be typed into the Decoding box above to translate back into plain text:
You must include a space between each note; enter '=' at the end to trigger the decryption and the results will appear in the Message box above.
Cipher Algorithm
You can manually encode and decode messages with these cipher grids:
The mapping of letters to scale degrees and beats within the cipher is intended to produce relatively simple musical melodies that you could sing or play. It is optimized for English, but functions fairly well with most Western European languages. Try typing in completely random letters and compare these melodies with ones generated by common words. There are also currently two variants designed specifically for Norwegian and Portuguese. For more details on the structure of Solfa Cipher and other music-based ciphers see: "Can Musical Encryption be Both?" (Cryptologia, 2023) and Music Cipher (Wikipedia).
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti 1 t i a s e n o 1 2 k z x q j # @ 2 3 r c h m d l u 3 4 f y g p w b v 4 D R M F S L T
With 28 possible cipher symbols, L2 and T2 are not needed for English. These notes can be used as switches to temporarily change the cipher key:
@ encrypts as T2 and transposes the tonic of the Solfa §Key to the pitch of the next letter. For example, @f
would shift all of the subsequent text to be encoded in the key of F (i.e., Do = F). This does not change the visible key signature, however, and thus makes the message more difficult to decrypt. If the next letter is not a valid pitch (e.g., @r), it is still enciphered in the melody, but no transposition occurs and it could be interpreted as a null cipher.
# (L2) switches to an alternate cipher grid which includes numbers, diacritics, and other special characters (for example #1984#
or cafe#´
):
Common diacritical letters may be typed directly into the plaintext message as a single character without any hash sign (e.g.,
# Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti # 1 1 9 3 +& 5 _- 7 1 2 ♩ ♪ ♬ 𝄢 𝄞 $# @% 2 3 8 2 0 4 *• 6 ¿? 3 4 ÷/ ^ ̂ °˚ >` <´ =~ "¨ 4 D R M F S L T
å, ñ, É
, etc.) and will be automatically enciphered musically as their three-character equivalent (ü = u#¨
). The paired symbols in the grid (e.g., +&, $#
, etc.) encrypt to the same scale degree, but display as a different octave (like lower- and upper-case letters). This is intended to allow customization of how the melody appears (e.g., avoid awkward leaps). In decrypting a melody, one should rely on context to interpret intent. For example, both e#´
and E$<
encrypt to S1L2S4, and would obviously be meant to represent é regardless of the octave. #1812#overture
). For other symbols, it is assumed to revert back after one character (e.g, pin#~ata, nai#¨ve, bjo#/rn
). D2 through S2 (shown as musical symbols in line 2) could either be employed to change the rhythmic unit or clef of the Solfa §Key or as your own user-defined characters or code words.
http://Solfa-Co.de/secrets © 2013 - Revised: 2023 - cipher{at}solfa-co[dot]de