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A Saxophonist Tricked the KGB by Encrypting Secrets in Music
- mdmglr 4y agoIf I understand correctly this was a substitution cipher where the alphabet was mapped to notes A-G, 5 sharps and 5 flats (15 characters total)? A-Z0-9 is 36 characters. I guess you could use chords (or different note values or rests) to reach the entire alphabet. Good thing Soviet officials did not insist she (or someone else) play an encoded composition which would probably not sound good.
- jacquesm 4y agoY cld jst lv t th vwls. r s tw sbsqnt nts t snd n chrctr
- _zzaw 4y agoShe could have just played an actual song, or—what I would have done—played the actual notes and claimed it was experimental art or something. Thirty seconds of a stultifyingly academic explanation about how some dissonant collection of notes is “post-futurist deconstructionism”, and most officials would probably not want to deal with her any further.
- ljw1001 4y agoA team of cryptographers in a Moscow basement is still trying to decipher Charlie Parker.