Annoyed with site’s complexity requirements?

Are the passwords “password” and “qwe123” no longer cutting it? Are websites not accepting “CorrectHorseBatteryStaple” due to lack of complexity?!?

Here’s a technique I came up with that helps me create memorable passwords that still meet obnoxious complexity requirements.

Pick your favorite guitar scale, in this example I’ll use the pentatonic scale.

From here, I imagine the keyboard as a fretboard. I will also press shift when I want to play the upper three strings.

My password is now “farw42FSRQ$!”. I usually call this good, but on some sites where I don’t want to security risk of duplicating a password, I will add the first letter of the site name. So for www.capitalone.com, my password would be “cfarw42FSRQ$!”

You can continue to apply this technique to learning songs as well. All you have to do is visualize the keyboard as a guitar fretboard. Having my password set as the crux riff to the crazy train solo helped me build the muscle memory needed to play that quickly and accurately.