[HN Gopher] Quantum Computer Music
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Quantum Computer Music
Author : e12e
Score : 34 points
Date : 2023-12-24 05:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ctm-festival.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ctm-festival.de)
| Rochus wrote:
| " _If you are interested in a more in-depth introduction to the
| emerging field of Quantum Computer Music, I recommend the book,
| Quantum Computer Music: Foundations, Methods and Advanced
| Concepts, published by Springer in 2022._ "
| https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-13909-3
|
| By the end of the day just another source of (quasi) random
| numbers which are somehow interpreted as music, isn't it?
| CrypticShift wrote:
| > random numbers which are somehow interpreted as music
|
| My initial reaction was similar. Nonetheless, I'm making an
| effort to embrace the diversity of what music can mean to
| different individuals. My only question to them is: are you
| genuinely moved by the music itself or do you "merely"
| intellectualize it?
|
| That being said, is this emerging field of Quantum Computer
| Music solely focused on generating random numbers? I must admit
| I only glanced through the article, so I wouldn't assert this
| definitively.
| Rochus wrote:
| > _I 'm making an effort to embrace the diversity of what
| music can mean to different individuals..._
|
| I'm a trained musician myself (see e.g. http://rochus-
| keller.ch/?p=1221) and I have also been exploring algorithmic
| composition for many years. There is no issue with diversity
| of what music can mean.
|
| The issue is from my point of view, that a lot of effort is
| spent with different algorithmic concepts, but in the end,
| any area of the generated number range is arbitrarily mapped
| to MIDI notes. You can e.g. see that with the output of
| cellular automata (which are also used in the referenced
| book), where any random strip of the overall image is
| interpreted as notes. You could just as well have used a
| quasi-random generator. The use of cellular automata
| therefore brought no added value.
|
| > _is this emerging field of Quantum Computer Music solely
| focused on generating random numbers?_
|
| Whenever a new idea or technology became popular, a few
| resourceful people started making music with it. Now it's
| quantum computers. Over the years, many dissertations have
| been written that have not really brought any progress. I
| give transformer DNN a good chance, but good results are
| likely to be a few years away.
| sporkl wrote:
| a lot of it does end up being that kind of thing, but not all.
| some of it's kind of like how quantum math has been used to
| model (if I remember correctly) seismology or weather, and some
| of it's about sonifying the entire quantum state, including
| superpositions (assuming no error/noise, the random part of
| quantum doesn't happen until measurement, where superpositions
| are destroyed)
| Rochus wrote:
| > _some of it's kind of like how quantum math has been used
| to model (if I remember correctly) seismology or weather, and
| some of it's about sonifying the entire quantum state,
| including superpositions_
|
| Well, the field of quantum computing is definitely important
| and very promising, but it has as little to do with music
| like the proportions in the movements of celestial bodies.
| gexaha wrote:
| there also exist a more scientific term for such practice -
| "sonification"
| Rochus wrote:
| > _a more scientific term for such practice - "sonification"_
|
| Sonification is a very useful concept, e.g. to make the blood
| flow audible in medical ultrasound. But this is not the same
| as algorithmic composition, which is the topic here.
| sporkl wrote:
| I co-authored a paper that was presented at the 2nd symposium
| mentioned in this article, and I've read the textbook mentioned
| in the article, happy to try to answer any questions
|
| The paper we wrote isn't on airxiv yet but can be read here:
| https://github.com/sporkl/superposition-rhythms/blob/main/is...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| How close to absolute zero does the audience need to be to hear
| the music?
| sporkl wrote:
| I couldn't make in in-person, but from what I heard the
| audience was pretty cool
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Quite cool idea.
|
| Two questions:
|
| Would you say you approach this more from the educational side,
| or from the artistic one?
|
| What about quantum circuits, and more complex gates (Hammond,
| ...). Do you think about "playing" a simple quantum circuit,
| hearing how the quantum state changes as it flows through the
| gates from start to end?
| sporkl wrote:
| Thanks! We were originally thinking of approaching things
| more from the educational side, but it's kind of a hard point
| to make without experimental evidence, which we don't have.
|
| As far as playing a quantum circuit through the end, that's
| what our python and max implementations do! Should work with
| any gate; but because it's simulation-based, there's a limit
| to the number of qubits. We're also working on a follow-up
| about sonifying arbitrary hamiltonians.
| jancsika wrote:
| It's too bad that technology in music refers to the means and not
| the ends.
|
| E.g., pastiche techniques in Mahler, continually developing
| variations in Brahms. Even octatonicism in early Messiaen, or a
| 70s DJ moving his hand back and forth on a spinning vinyl and
| rhyming to its rhythm.
|
| These are all things you can hear in the music that sound
| qualitatively different than music written without those
| techniques.
|
| In the last excerpt from the article, I hear an upward portamento
| (smooth rising frequency ramp). But it's the same kind of
| portamento as one would get from classical digital
| synthesis/resynthesis, or even analog synthesis. It may
| technically be produced by a quantum computer, but it's not a
| "quantum portamento" in any musically significant sense.
|
| However, maybe such a thing is possible. For example, one can
| adjust the partials in the 2nd pitch of a melody in such a way
| that the listener cannot easily tell whether that 2nd pitch is
| higher or lower than the first. One could then play a portamento
| extending from the 1st to 2nd pitch, and the direction of the
| portamento would reveal whether that 2nd pitch was indeed higher
| or lower. So in a way, "measuring" the interval distance with the
| portamento affects whether that 2nd pitch was higher or lower. :)
| asah wrote:
| lol, more like a (quantum) of (computer music) !
| Podgajski wrote:
| Hey! That's just as dystopian as I thought it would sound!
| florilegiumson wrote:
| The author is right that there is nothing new about making music
| with AI. However, earlier uses of AI were for symbol
| manipulation, whereas currently AI has the potential to be a new
| kind of sound synthesis method. I've heard demos where sounds
| come from these interstitial regions of latent space and so it
| sounds like I'm listening to two things at once. I wonder if
| quantum computers will have the ability to do something similarly
| freaky.
|
| It's really cool to use quantum computers to compose music, but
| I'd love to see them used for things other than control of
| "frequency modulation (FM), additive synthesis, and granular
| synthesis."
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