Write a song with your seed phrase

[lovesmayfamilis]

OP, in addition to your idea, get a parrot and teach it your song. Parrots are long-lived; if you are accidentally hit in the head, and you forget your song, then the bird will restore your memory.
But seriously, good methods of saving passphrases have already been mentioned thousands of times. It is always said that the best is the enemy of the good. If keeping a record of the seed phrase on paper works, but for the paranoid on steel, why complicate it even more?

[Sarah Azhari]

"I wish I was like you
Easily amused
Find my nest of salt
Everything’s my fault
I'll take all the blame
Aqua sea foam shame
Sunburn freezer burn
Choking on the ashes of her enemy"

- All Apologies by Nirvana

Humans have trouble remembering nonsense like 12 random words, but if you write some lyrics and add the melody to your favorite song, it’s a lot easier. I have no idea what Kurt Cobain is talking about above, but if the melody is good, we can remember any combination of words.

I will be confused when memories the lyrics song at the same time and have to remember the melody too. And because the BIP39 seed word is unavailable in my local language, I shouldn't follow your suggestion. It's hard to memorize the lyric song where you unusually use that language. Are you creating another backup?, if not, you have to prepare to lose the money.

[Cryptmuster]

Compiling a song from the words of a seed phrase is not so easy, there must be a rhyme in the verses, and for this you will most likely have to use additional words and you will need to somehow know the words from the seed phrase and where are the other additional words. Because remembering everything will not work, our memory is not so perfect to remember everything. I doubt this method, because it still requires the use of memory, and it can let us down at the most crucial moment.

[Ucy]

"I wish I was like you
Easily amused
Find my nest of salt
Everything’s my fault
I'll take all the blame
Aqua sea foam shame
Sunburn freezer burn
Choking on the ashes of her enemy"

- All Apologies by Nirvana

Humans have trouble remembering nonsense like 12 random words, but if you write some lyrics and add the melody to your favorite song, it’s a lot easier. I have no idea what Kurt Cobain is talking about above, but if the melody is good, we can remember any combination of words.

I wouldn't advise people to memorize things like that, especially secret keys that can be used to access valuable private data or assets. People could give them away sub-consciously or in the dream. I have no problem with memorizing public info, or private info that is not too valuable

[Rruchi man]

Humans have trouble remembering nonsense like 12 random words, but if you write some lyrics and add the melody to your favorite song, it’s a lot easier. I have no idea what Kurt Cobain is talking about above, but if the melody is good, we can remember any combination of words.

Making music out of things that are difficult to keep to memory is a really good way not to forget things. I remember that when we were in the  high school then and were trying to learn about the first twenty elements in chemistry and also the periodic table, Our teacher made us sing a song that she formed using the name and symbol of these elements. It was the surest way for us not to ever forget, because I actually never did till date, whenever I remember the melody, I remember the elements in the right order. If songs were able to help us learn the very long periodic table, turning your seed phrase into a melody can be another good way to always remember them. You can even go the extra to record or write this song so even if you face experience memory loss, you will not be left completely blank.

[Victorik]

Nicely done. But, not everyone is as talented as you to be able to write a song with some random words.

I would love to do something like this with my seed phrase tho.

However, hope you know that writing a song with your seed phrase doesn't guarantee that you will remember it. You might still forget a word or two, so my best bet is to write it down on paper, that way you never get to forget except you misplace the paper.

[m2017]

You can write a song with your seed phrase, but know that the memory can fail someone at anytime, what you think you know might be forgetting, or the brain not able to accurately process the correct words completely. What you can rely on is to just backup the seed phrase offline on paper or metallic sheet. Backup on paper is the easiest while you can have the backup in two or three different locations, but there are metallic sheet you can purchase which are designed for seed phrase backup as well. Have the backup in at least two or three different locations. You can make the song the fourth backup, but never rely on it.

I also support your opinion that relying only on memory to save seed-phrases is very risky. But what if you combine your proposal for a backup on paper or metal with OP's proposal? That is, in the backup, write not just the words from the seed-phrase, but write it as the text of the song. If you forget or mix up the lyrics of your seed-song, then the correct version will be in the backup. And also, it will create an insignificant, but still protection from prying eyes. Well, who would be interested in a simple song embossed on a piece of metal?

[Plaguedeath]

As long as the song is really nice and easy to sing, it will make you easier to remember your seed phrase. The thing is your seed phrase is randomly generated, you would get a word that you didn't really understand the meaning or really hard to include it for your song, this make it's not good to write a song with your seed phrase. Don't really depends with your song, you need to back up your seed phrase using steel plate or other solid material.

[Doan9269]

If i can consider the security of assets with bitcoin i don't think it's advisable to openly publish my seed phrase on the open forum like this, to me it's not safe enough to use the seed phrase in writing a song on a platform like this, someone could easily spy up the keys and further with some actions to aim on attacking the user, there are more secured ways to permanent keep our keys without any compromised, such is in using an encrypted device whereby you can write them and lock the access, or get yourself a hardware wallets if having problem with keeping the keys in a safe way.

[DdmrDdmr]

Though it should never be the one of the main ways of storing a seed phrase, I wouldn’t discard it’s use under certain circumstances. Say for example one needs to flee from his country, wishes to keep his seed handy, but has a chance that anything physical he carries (cyphered or not) can be confiscated or stolen along the way. One could try to memorize it, and a poem or a song seem like the easiest ways to convey the seed to memory, though it has to be well committed and tested, and it’s certainly not exempt from risks.

Often though, people may have more than one seed, and the song scenario is likely not going to be feasibly scalable to accommodate more than one seed. Additionally, one has to make sure not only to include the words from the mnemonic in order, but also to asses that he doesn’t include additional words from BIP 39’s wordlist alongside those from the seed in the said song.

[Hamza2424]

What if i like nursery poems haha 🤣. Bro what are are really doing thats one of the most stupid thing i have ever sceen as you did mentioned that your are not encouraging but still what are you doing haha what you actually want to prove if these are your writing skill then you are admired.

[swogerino]

That is not something that works always,how many times our memory fails us in the most important part of an exam for example,the same thing can happen to your seed if you forget about it after a long time of creating such a melody.

What I do is to keep 4 words of the seed in an offline Laptop that I almost never use,4 words of it in my phone and 4 words of it in a document in another PC to make it difficult for attackers while I have access to all these devices.I have also a small safe and a paper with all the 12 words if anything bad (failure) happens to my devices.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I am not suggesting this to be your only an option for storing your seed phrase at all.

FTFY.

It is repeatedly told that storing a seed phrase in a non-standard way is prone to error. What's so hard to comprehend about that? You don't store your seed phrase into your head, or write a song about it, or write a book about it, or paint a board about it, or keep each word in distant places, or convert the seed into emojis, or use the hash of a password of your choice as seed etc., etc., etc. You can think of a billion "fun" ways to take care of your seed phrase, but it's irresponsible the least to avoid the known, simple ones everybody uses.

[CryptSafe]

Using your seed phrase in such capacity is not bad but I think being able to keep memorizing it on daily basis is. Can you be able to do that every day as long as time passes by in years as the case maybe as long as you have that wallet in usage. Come to talk of it, there are lots of activities one gets him or herself involved in on daily basis so tell me if you get entangled with things on daily basis would you be able to memorize your key phrase everyday after a hectic time and keep doing this over and over. The best thing you can do is to keep record of your seed phrase in a particular place where only you can access it at any point in time while you do your memorising work as that phrase is the key to your assets.

[BTCapsule]

I am not suggesting this to be your only an option for storing your seed phrase at all.

FTFY.

It is repeatedly told that storing a seed phrase in a non-standard way is prone to error. What's so hard to comprehend about that? You don't store your seed phrase into your head, or write a song about it, or write a book about it, or paint a board about it, or keep each word in distant places, or convert the seed into emojis, or use the hash of a password of your choice as seed etc., etc., etc. You can think of a billion "fun" ways to take care of your seed phrase, but it's irresponsible the least to avoid the known, simple ones everybody uses.

What are the disadvantages of memorizing your seed phrase? I definitely understand why depending on a brain wallet is a bad idea, but as a last resort backup, I’m not sure I understand why this is discouraged.

[Welsh]

It is not a bad idea as this is a very old trick used to remember all kind of information that people have known for a very long time, but it should not replace traditional backups and at best it should be used as a last resort.

Well, it could be. Obviously, users here have already mentioned the memory problem, however what about not adding enough entropy. Since, seed words are well known at this point, and it's open source anyhow. Therefore, if you don't put words that are in that list, and aren't part of your seed, the entropy is actually terrible. Obviously, this only goes for if you're writing this down, but generally to remember something as complex as this you'd need to write it down.

Besides, as long as you look after your physical security, then you don't need to complicate things further by doing something like this.

[xSkylarx]

"I wish I was like you
Easily amused
Find my nest of salt
Everything’s my fault
I'll take all the blame
Aqua sea foam shame
Sunburn freezer burn
Choking on the ashes of her enemy"

- All Apologies by Nirvana

Humans have trouble remembering nonsense like 12 random words, but if you write some lyrics and add the melody to your favorite song, it’s a lot easier. I have no idea what Kurt Cobain is talking about above, but if the melody is good, we can remember any combination of words.

EDIT

I am not suggesting this to be your only option for storing your seed phrase. I just thought it could be helpful to remember your seed phrase, in case you lose your backups.

Good idea, but I am not really into memorizing it; I am always the guy who is putting it on paper or storing it in my drive as it is accessible to me. I will try it when I create a wallet soon. But the problem is if I forget it? I am a very forgetful person, though I can see the advantages of this if you need to use it like you don't have a physical copy of your seed phrase, and it is not accessible to the one you've saved on your computer. This is nice in this kind of situation

[kryptqnick]

I find the general idea of hiding a pass phrase in art appealing. A friend of mine once used a fictional text and inserted the passphrase there as words of one character where a character did not speak clearly. It took some time to find the phrase, of course, but it's possible when you know where to look. Making a song with the words also sounds like a creative idea, but if a song is known to anyone, people can probably brute force the pass phrase quite fast (given that all the right words are already in a very small text), whereas if a song is only known by the person who made the lyrics, there's a good chance of just forgetting it. Have you never written some poetry but have now zero idea of the words in those verses? I think it's a pretty common issue, unless one has an incredibly reliable memory. With mine, I wouldn't risk it.

[BlackHatCoiner]

What are the disadvantages of memorizing your seed phrase?

You rely on human brain and memory, both of which are proven improper for this job. There have been countless of incidents of people who just forgot a few words, or the order of the words years later, and got locked off their wallet. It gives you a false sense of security. You should better find a secure alternative.

Good idea, but I am not really into memorizing it; I am always the guy who is putting it on paper or storing it in my drive as it is accessible to me.

Storing the seed phrase to a hard drive is also non-recommended.

[buwaytress]

Good point on entropy from Welsh, and I would add that adding an extra word or two, particularly in non-english languages with recognised romanised spelling, to yr phrase can help with that, can help with a song, and anyway deters cracking using recognised dictionaries.

I don't know well enough if that's bad practice but no one has ever pointed out to me it is, I do know that it has been pointed out it doesn't actually improve the security of an already properly randomised seed selection.