Cryptography, Dancing, Morse Code, Number Theory, and Music

What do cryptography, dancing, Morse code, number theory, and music have in common? My latest album: Sweet Suites, Volume 1: Um… What?

Cipher Suite no. 1, Fs PSK_PBKDF2_SNOW_HMAC, “Deprecated” (music video, sheet music) is my attempt to turn a cipher suite into a suite of dance music based on the cryptographic algorithms. In Pavane for a Pre‐Shared Key, Alice (clarinet) and Bob (violin) are in perfect sync throughout a slow and formal key agreement (dance). For the Password‐Based Key Derivation Function Two‐Step, cryptographic key derivation is represented by frequent musical key changes. Sometimes Alice derives new keys from a secret; sometimes Bob does; sometimes they both derive the same keys from the same secret. Once data encryption key(s) are available, Alice and Bob can start sending encrypted messages using a stream cipher, in Snoa in the SNOW. As they go through the ciphertexts in this dance music, they frequently lose synchronization, but they recover each time. Finally, they authenticate their messages with a Hash‐Based Message Authentication Zwiefacher. The zwiefacher’s formula is (PPWWP)²: initialize inner hash (pivot), XOR with inner pad (pivot), update inner hash with K′ XOR inner pad (waltz), update inner hash with message (waltz), finalize inner hash (pivot), initialize outer hash (pivot), XOR with outer pad (pivot), update outer hash with K′ XOR outer pad (waltz), update outer hash with inner hash result (waltz), finalize outer hash (pivot).

Morse Code Suite no. 1, Fs 1865 (music video, sheet music) comes from my realization a while ago that I really like the sound of International Morse Code’s rhythm, and my inability to find any music with that rhythm. (There is plenty of music that incorporates Morse code, but I didn’t find any that used standard timings for a significant portion of the tune.)

Piano Axioms Suite no. 1, Fs ℕ (music video, sheet music) exists because I saw an unfulfilled mathematical pun opportunity in the name of the Peano axioms (a.k.a., Peano postulates). In each of the five axioms/postulates/movements, rests represent zero and successive notes represent successive natural numbers.

Finally, because vuvuzelas amuse me, I arranged Morse Code Suite no. 1 for Solo Vuvuzela, Fs 1865‽ (music video, sheet music). It sounds pretty bad, but that’s definitely the point.

Get the album today (or tomorrow, or not at all, who am I to tell you what to do?) on Bandcamp.