What Is Tempo’s Alphabet?
Tempo’s Alphabet is a speech translator designed for a boy with an unusual "speech impediment."
Tempo is a funny name for a boy, but it’s fitting in this absurd case. Now a 13-year-old in the seventh grade, he was born with a highly unique condition. He jokingly calls it "the gift from a curse."
Caused unnaturally. By an everyday item; a YouTube video. Yes. It’s true. This is how the YouTube video was discovered …
Tempo’s mother, Frances, is a woman of borderline-average IQ whose own mother badly wanted her to be born gifted. Frances's insecurity about her intelligence led her to search for a way to ensure her soon-to-be-born son would become a genius.
“Insecurity is a heck of thing… isn’t it? I don’t blame her.”
When Frances shared her anxiety with a fellow expectant mother in yoga class, the woman pointed her toward a social media influencer named Saranda Dreamweaver, a self-proclaimed "Spellfluencer” boasting a grand total of three followers.
In her most popular video (which sat at five views), Saranda shared a ritual promising to boost a baby’s IQ through the “magical powers” of music and a chant called “DO. RE. MI.”
Frances had no idea the chant was an actual witchcraft spell; she simply thought it was a quirky modern parenting trend. (But then again, deep thinking was never her strong suit.)
For the rest of her pregnancy, Frances faithfully chanted the spell while blasting her favorite song from Saranda’s Magic Spells playlist on a loop… and waited.
When Tempo was finally born, he didn't cry or make a single sound for months. But then, the silence broke.
One day, Tempo’s father Truman, a failed folk rock musician, strummed his guitar while Tempo was in the room.
Upon hearing the guitar notes, Tempo opened his mouth and mirrored them perfectly. His parents watched in sheer horror as their son began speaking musical notes.
Tempo retains vivid memories of hearing that music from inside the womb.
However, because Frances had butchered the Spellfluencer's instructions, the ritual backfired into a cosmic joke.
In a twisted way, Saranda's video hadn't lied: the power of "DO. RE. MI." changed his life forever.
But instead of raising his IQ, the spell manifested literally, restricting his entire vocabulary to the fundamental musical scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, and B.
He was trapped inside a permanent loop of Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti.
The spell did cause one other major side effect: psychic telepathy.
Inside her head, Frances could hear Tempo’s thoughts in a normal speaking voice, and Tempo could hear Frances’ thoughts in return. Outside of their private connection, however, Tempo was completely unable to communicate.
Whenever he opened his mouth to speak to the rest of the world, all anyone else could hear was a jumble of musical notes.
Until Tempo’s Alphabet was created, Tempo was forbidden to talk to anyone.
“Just tell them how to use it… I’ll show them in the game.”
Polybius Square vs. Tempo’s Alphabet
How does Tempo's Alphabet differ from a Polybius square?
A traditional Polybius cipher uses a 5×5 matrix, forcing certain letters to share a single cell. Tempo's Alphabet, however, scales up to a 7×4 grid. Each column aligns perfectly with a note from the C major scale, linking the alphabet letters directly to the musical notes Tempo speaks.
Because punctuation has no musical sound, the exclamation point and question mark were added simply to fill out the remaining slots of the 28-cell grid.
This expanded layout ensures every letter gets its own space, while these extra symbols finally give Tempo a way to express real emotion.
It's a wacky backstory. And you may find it hard to believe. But that's how it all happened.
“You can’t make this stuff up.”
