Physics world. Hello and welcome to the Physics World Stories podcast.
I'm Andre g Lester, and in this episode we're gonna be exploring quantum music.
You're listening to a recording of the premiere of Spinnings at the Gutter
Institute in London on the 8th of December, 2022.
This is a network of three Q1 synth instruments.
A Q1 synth is a quantum synthesizer that uses real quantum hardware
computers to synthesize sounds,
playing NICU on a Pete Thomas Pao tab and
Edwardo Miranda.
We'll hear more about that event at the Ghetto Institute later in the podcast,
and we'll hear from Maria Manone,
a theoretical physicist and composer.
First,
here's a quick message from physics world's Hammus Johnston about this podcast
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Philip Ball is a science writer and an editor of the Journal Nature.
His feature for Physics world entitled,
can We Use Quantum Computers for Music is now on the physics world website,
physics world.com.
Quantum music is, uh,
an an idea that is relatively new. It's, um,
seems to be something that people have only really began exploring in the past
few years when quantum computers themselves have been publicly available.
You know,
there are these small systems with just a few qubits that anyone can use if they
register. And so there seemed to be a small, tiny group really of,
um,
musicians and composers and others who figure that they want
to use these resources to see what these resources have to offer for making
music. So it's really at the very early, at the embryonic stage,
no one really knows, uh, where it might go, whether it might go anywhere,
whether quantum computing, you know,
really has something new to offer music that traditional computers can't do.
It's all experimental at this stage. Um, but I think it's, it, it's,
it seems really exciting, you know,
I've heard a bit of it and it was kind of interesting. Um,
certainly very avron garde. So, you know, it's,
it's almost not even a field yet, it's just an idea.
Okay. But you've just held up a very large book all about it. What,
what's in that book then, if it's new and we don't really know?
Yeah. Well, this is just been published, this book, it was published this, uh,
this year, and it is, or claims to be, and I, I'm sure this is true,
the first book that talks about, uh, quantum,
it's simply called Quantum Computer Music. It's published by Springer. Um,
so it's really, I think every pretty,
probably pretty much everyone who is interested in this idea is in this book.
Um, and, uh, and it,
it gives a sort of survey of things that might be done using quantum
computing in a musical context. So the, you know,
it ranges from using quantum computers for composing for performing,
but also quite intriguingly for actually recording music. Um, you know, we,
we record it digitally using classical computing.
It's possible to think of ways of, uh, developing a quantum audio.
Um, what would that, what's the best way to represent sound, you know,
as a quantum state and what would be the point of doing it? Um,
and it even goes into sort of thinking about, uh,
using quantum music for lighting and, uh, you know,
for broader aspects of musical performance. So, um,
it's a book full of ideas. It's actually very dense. Uh, there's a lot of,
a lot of, um, uh, theory in here of quantum, you know, quantum, uh, uh, uh,
mechanics, basically theory.
So it's certainly not for the lighthearted or for the kind of, you know,
musician who just wants to dabble in this. I think they'd be quite daunted. Um,
but it does for the first time bring together some of these ideas.
If you are looking for reading material on quantum music,
I can recommend Philip Ball's feature on the physics world website.
In that feature, he tells us about an event he went to all about quantum music.
Yes. Uh, it was an event that was, um,
put together by a composer and computer scientist called Eduardo Rec
Miranda, um, who is at the University of Plymouth.
And I had, um, in a completely different context in writing about music,
I had made, uh, contact with Eduardo some years back. And,
uh, so he thought I might be interested in, uh, in this event.
So he got in touch and said, it's going on. It was a very small event.
It was hosted at the Gerta Institute,
which is a kind of German cultural institute, um,
just opposite Imperial College in London. And, uh, I was intrigued. Uh,
this was in December, and so I thought, well, let's see what, you know,
what comes with this. So I went along and it was a small event.
There were probably about 150 people there in the little lecture theater they
have go to institute. But among them, I, there were a couple of people there,
and I thought, is that, is that, yes, it is.
It was Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno. And, uh, I suddenly,
you know, I mean, uh, one shouldn't be too impressed by, by big names,
but it does, you know,
it did sort of show actually there are people who are already, you know,
like the two of them who are already switched on to this as something that's
happening and who are intrigued by it. Um, and I dunno, you know,
where that's gonna go. I dunno whether others will, um, uh, other musicians,
other high profile musicians will become involved. But of course,
Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel have always had a long interest in experimental
music, um, in the avant garde. Uh, so in a sense, you know,
they are the kind of people that you would obviously be expecting to,
to take an interest, but it was very intriguing that even at that early stage,
you know, they were there to, to just find out what was going on.
So the event consisted, um, of, uh, you know,
there were some talks about general background,
but then there were some performances, uh, using quantum computers.
And in some way or another, they all used a,
basically a link through the cloud to the quantum computers that I b make,
um, in New York. Uh,
Eduardo didn't seem too clear actually whether they were housed.
There's a new kind of center, um,
a sort of a quantum data center that IBM has set up in puke New York.
But, you know, until then they've had their quantum computers at,
to the Yorktown Heights Research Center.
So he wasn't quite sure which one was being used, but, you know,
live in real time. The, the signals that they were making on stage,
the performers were being sent to that quantum computer and processed in some
way and sent back. And it was very intriguing.
It was certainly the kind of thing that, you know,
you'd need to be interested in the avant-garde of music. Uh,
it wasn't pretty music by any means.
It sounded more like a sort of horror movie soundtrack,
but intriguingly so to my ear.
It's the other person who would automatically come to mind for this sort of
experimental thing would be bjo. Yeah.
Would be wonderful, wouldn't it? And, uh, for all I know,
she may already be thinking along those lines,
but absolutely she's the sort of person who you'd be, uh, expecting to, to,
you know, be starting to take an interest in an area like this.
But it's, it, uh, I mean, there aren't many quantum computers, right?
They've had to connect over the internet to one to do it.
So how realistic is it that this could be anything other
than, um, a niche avant garde way of doing music.
Or to put it less politely, maybe a gimmick? I mean,
I think that's what some people wonder about. But, uh, and you know, again,
I think frankly, and Eduardo says this as well,
that it's too early to really be able to tell.
And part of the reason for that is that the quantum computing resources that are
generally available to, to people like him at the moment are very,
very rudimentary. So they were using a seven qubit device, um,
b m device. Um, and you know,
he has made it very clear that there's really nothing that he is doing at the
moment using quantum computing that could not be simulated on a
classical computer. Um, but that's, you know,
because of the stage we're at at the moment,
quantum computing is moving so fast, you know, already ibm,
their sort of state-of-the-art chip has 400 and something
qubits on. Um, and you know, that's,
it seems to be sort of changing. I mean,
there's a kind of almost like a model or for quantum computing now that is
really, really fast. You know, it's changing. Um, you know,
within each year it seems like there's a doubling, if not more of the,
a number of qubits available. Um, so,
and Eduardo says that already some of the algorithms that he's using,
although you could do them on a classical computer, they would be, uh,
ex computation expensive to do. And you know,
it's probably not gonna be very long at all before you are using quantum
resources in a way that's hard to simulate classically,
just as already there are some problems that classical computers would struggle
with and quantum computers can do quite quickly.
And I guess that's particularly important if you are wanting to use them.
And this is a part, a big part of, um,
certainly an aspect of quantum music if you're wanting to use them live in
real time, um, that, you know,
you need those resources to be able to compute fast. So, um,
you know, I think that's the way it's going,
that as quantum computing resources expand as they're clearly going to do,
I think the possibilities for using them musically are going to expand
accordingly.
I think it's probably worth taking a step back slightly just to look at what
quantum computing is.
I mean, the way it's conventionally explained,
and I'll try and do this carefully because sometimes it's a little loosely
explained, but, um, in standard classical computing,
uh, we're used to the idea that there are bits that, um, encode, uh, in binary.
So, you know, you could say they, they have two possible states,
which we generally represent as a one or a zero qu for quantum computing.
Um, we use, uh, kind of analogous, um, quantum bits,
um, but they can as well as, uh, encoding either a one or a zero,
they can effectively encode mixtures of those two.
Um, I, and I should really use the technical word superpositions cuz excuse is
something different in quantum, uh, computing. Um, so, um,
what that really means is not that they're, I mean, sometimes it's said, well,
it means these qubits can be both one and zero at the same time.
That's not really the best way of putting it. I mean, they can be, uh, you know,
they can have those, uh, components in any ratios for one thing.
Um,
but also what it really means is that when you make a measurement of that
cubic to find out its state, uh,
it could either be a one or a zero with different probabilities depending on how
you've, you've set it up. Um,
and what that effectively means is that you can, uh, that there,
there is a sort of bigger capacity for encoding information, if you like,
in fewer qubits. So you can do with just a handful, you know, I,
I said that the, um, the devices they were using had seven qubits. Um,
which sounds, you know, when you think of the millions or billions even, uh,
of bits that our, you know, standard desktop com computers have,
it sounds poultry, but actually already there's the, uh,
enough potential in tho that handful of qubits to do some very,
very complex tasks because of this greater capacity for
encoding, because of the, the possibility of using, uh, superpositions.
And the way it tends to happen is that the qubits have to be coherent
with one another if you like. They're, they're, they, you can think of them as,
you know, like quantum objects. They're kind of wavy objects,
and coherent just means that the waves of each of them sort of stay in step with
one another that's essential for doing quantum computing.
And that's actually the big problem with it because it's very hard to maintain
that coherence. Um, thermal energy, any sort of heat, you know,
very quickly tends to wash it away,
which is why we don't tend to see quantum phenomena at the everyday level. Um,
so the challenge for quantum computing is to prevent that from happening.
And generally what it means is that the qubits have to be cryogenically cooled,
um, as well as some other sort of measures to prevent that, that de coherence.
And they, even then, they only stay coherent for a short time. I mean, you know,
typically less than a second. But, uh, the,
that's long enough for some quantum algorithms to be performed before
the, the, the de coherence sets in.
Is it always going to have to be cryogenically frozen? Is it,
is that a process that we just can't do at room.
Temperature? Again, I, I think nobody knows, um,
at the moment with the kind of, kind of, um, quantum bits and qubits that are,
that are, that are standard in many of these devices, they, um,
are superconducting quantum bits and superconducting superconductivity is
itself inherently a quantum phenomenon. Um, so you have to cool, uh, the,
the little, they're kind of almost like little rings of, of metal,
and you have to cool them right down to get them into a superconducting state.
And that state itself, because it's a quantum state,
it can be used to encode quantum information. So, um, you know,
at the moment, uh, you, it, it, it is necessary to cryogenically call them.
But actually, you know, just in the past few weeks we've uh,
sort of been hearing about how superconductivity itself, um,
which is a quantum phenomenon, nevertheless, it seems possible to achieve it,
add something like, and perhaps literally at room temperatures, um,
in some systems ones in which, uh, generally speaking, you have to squeeze,
uh, to apply a lot of pressure to to, to get to the superconducting state. But,
you know,
it certainly seems feasible that you might be able to make superconductors at
work at room temperature.
You'd probably still need some sort of cooling to avoid the, the, uh,
deco hearing effects of heat possibly, but we don't really know. So, uh,
you know, I don't think it's, it's essential. Um, uh,
I don't think it's a given that quantum computers will have to be cryogenically
cooled, but even if they are, it's not a big deal. Actually. It means, you know,
that they have to be housed in these centers with cryogenic cooling and so on.
But that's okay because you, the resources, as I say,
can be made available through the cloud.
So I don't think that that in itself need be a, uh,
an obstacle to making quantum computing very useful.
It does perhaps mean that, you know, certainly for the foreseeable future,
we're not gonna have quantum computing laptops, and it's not even clear that,
that we'd actually want them. Um, but, uh, you know, the, all all of this,
uh, is, is open in the indefinite future.
We don't know what the limitations might be.
To, to be perfectly honest,
the first application possible application of quantum computing that I've heard
that made me think, oh, I can see you might want that in a laptop,
is when you just mentioned the possible new ways of recording audio. I mean,
that's a, that's a process that somebody might want on their laptop, right?
It's possible. Yeah. I mean, you know, again, it, it, it,
we don't even know what would be the best way of representing audio in a quantum
sense, but, you know, they are waves, , and audio is waves.
Um, and maybe you can, you know, what,
what would happen if you could sort of create superpositions of two different
tunes? I really don't know what the, the possibilities are. But, uh, you know,
that's, that's exactly the kind of thing that Eduardo and, and others are,
you know, keen to explore. Just what, what are the possibilities?
Where might they be useful?
Musicians look for inspiration everywhere, and it's,
it's a wonderful thing that they look for it in science and they look for it In
physics,
it quite often is a bit difficult to listen to
when science and music meet from a science point of view.
I can totally see why it's interesting. Why is that interesting from a music.
Point of view? Well, um, okay, here, here's one possible answer to that. Um,
because th there's also, um, a lot of interest, of course,
in using classical computers, um, in, uh,
their sort of AI mode, uh, for making music.
And, you know, there are, um,
deep learning algorithms that have been made that are pretty good at creating
pastes of music in a certain style just as chat g p t can do it for text.
So, you know, you can say to some of these, you know, algorithms,
give me a a knock turn.
That sounds a bit like when a show pans and these days it can do pretty well,
which is, is no big deal in itself. I mean, I find that a bit sort of dull,
but what, what, but what's more interesting is that some of those systems,
um, AI systems for music, they can generate musical ideas.
And, um,
what some composers are doing is using them purely for that to
generate things that they wouldn't,
the composer themselves wouldn't have come up with. Um, but that they can hear,
you know,
maybe just a sort of kernel of an idea that's been generated by AI and think
that's got possibilities. I can do stuff with that.
Maybe I can use the AI to expand on that to, you know, um,
develop it into something or maybe I can do it myself. Um, uh, so,
you know, that's the way, um, a AI is being used,
or at least I think that's the way it's being used, interestingly,
as a sort of tool for human composers rather than just as a system for making a
load of music. That sounds a bit like what we've heard before. Um, and you know,
there is a, a, a long tradition of using, I mean, you said, uh, that,
you know, musicians and artists of all sorts have always been,
there's always been some who have been really eager to use the latest
technologies as soon as they appear and see what they can they can do for them.
So, you know,
that happened with the beginnings of recorded sound in the early 20th century.
It happened in the 1950s, uh,
and sixties when classical computers started to become available.
There were some, uh, composers, uh, iis z Zar,
the Greek French composer, uh, is probably the best known of them.
He was a kind of avant-garde in, you know,
in his time he was really interested in what computers could do for, um,
for music. John Cage, actually the experimental us, uh, composer was another.
Um, and they actually tended to sort of congregate, um,
around Bell Labs, um, uh, in New New Jersey in those days.
There was a whole kind of group of scientists and artists and tech technologists
who were, you know, just trying to discuss that stuff and see what these,
this new tech technology could do. And some interesting stuff did,
I think come out of that. Um, it, you know, it, it's always,
when it's sort of at the forefront and it's the cutting edge, it's uh,
it's avant garde. It is an acquired taste.
And certainly the stuff I heard at in December, you know,
would've been an acquired taste. It, it was, you know, there were rumbles,
there were sort of static and so on. But actually, you know,
what I've heard of Eduardo's music previously using other technologies is of
that sort, it's almost closer to what some, I mean, the,
the distinction is maybe arbitrary,
but some people talk about sound art rather than music,
that you're just using sound to create a kind of an ambiance. Um,
and, you know, that overlaps completely with what Brian Eno is known for doing.
So, you know, at this stage it is an acquired taste,
but I actually find it much more interesting to, to,
to see when the technologies can take you in new directions rather than,
you know,
seeing whether you can make a sort of quantum version of a bar canta or
something that's, that's dull. That's, that's kind of been done already.
So why bother.
At the quantum music event that Philip attended in London?
There was also an interesting sounding interaction between a violinist and a
quantum computer.
Paul Stratton was one of the performers at the, um, December, uh, conference,
uh, concert I suppose we could call it. And, um, in, in that case,
he was, it was like a sort of call and response. He would play, uh,
an improvised line,
a little phrase of music that would be processed, uh, you know,
digitally and sent to the I B M computer that would do something using
a quantum algorithm that would come up with a response,
and that would then be played back in real time in the, um,
in the Gutter Institute. And, you know, you could play it back,
sort of choosing whatever sound you wanted. In this case,
it was a kind of saxophone, synthesized saxophone sound. Um, and so, you know,
it was a kind of an improvised, um,
call and response between the computer and the, uh, the violinist,
exactly how what Paul Stratton played was
used to come up with a response line. You know, I don't know,
it wasn't sort of, it wasn't too clear as some kind of quantum algorithm. Um,
and again, this is something that Ai, uh, music systems are doing as well,
that they can, you can sort of, you know,
they can improvise to some extent and they can with prompts from a,
a live musician, and you can get an interesting sort of, um,
interaction going there. Um, and you know, again,
it wasn't clear what the quantum aspect of this was adding to a,
an an approach like that, except that I would say with AI, that you,
you can often hear, you know,
it's just not much more than the same note sort of being improvised by the
human sort of muddled around a bit and maybe, you know,
slightly switched around. Whereas this, it sounded quite different,
the lines that the computer was coming up with. And, you know,
in some ways quite surprising. And the hope, I guess, in a, uh,
a situation like this is that then the human, you know,
performer is inspired by what they've heard in response and they come up,
you know, they go off in a different direction.
And it goes from there in a way similar to the way many jazz
musicians interact off one another. Um, so yeah,
that was another way in which the, uh, the algorithms were used.
The technological singularity is a hypothetical point in the future where
technology growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible bringing about
unforeseeable changes to human civilization.
I'd like to think that quantum music won't replace all musicians and all
music, and although those changes are going to be unforeseeable,
I'd like to reassure those musicians listening to.
Um, I don't foresee that. Um,
and I don't certainly don't think we want it. Um, and you know,
there is a big discussion going on, and it's happened,
it's happened much more with, uh, with AI than with, uh,
quantum computing that, um, you know, people are talking about, well,
what does creativity really mean? Because at the moment, um, as I say,
AI systems can't really do much more interesting
than pastiche. I've heard some that do actually. Um, there was a, there's a,
a, a group at, uh,
the University of Malaga in Spain who had a really interesting system,
certainly about 10 years ago, called Iams that um, was,
it wasn't just making pastiche, it was general, genuinely composing pieces,
again, in a kind of modernist style, quite a sort of spiky style.
It sounded to me like kind of early 20th century music, entirely, uh,
AI generated. And some of that was, I mean,
it composed it and then it could score it.
And then some of that was played by professional musicians including, uh,
I think the London Symphony. Um, and, uh,
it was interesting, you know, I think it was, there were some interesting ideas,
um, in there. So, uh, you know, the, the, but, but, but I think that, that,
that often when you are using deep learning like this,
you're just in a sense getting back what is already in the dataset.
So the fact that you could make something that sounds a bit like a choppa knock
turn, if you train the AI on Choppa, no turns big deal, you know,
that, that that doesn't impress me. And it's always, from what I've heard,
it's always a little bit more rubbish, actually, , it's kinda, it's you,
you, you can, um, yeah, you just get a sense that, okay, it's like,
you know, a, a not very good composer sort of trying to do a choppa knock turn.
But there are some cases where certainly non-expert listeners have struggled to
tell the difference between the two. Um, but you know,
I don't think that's ever gonna be very interesting. And in any event,
anything like that requires the human material,
you know, to be trained on. Um, so,
so that it's not obvious that it's, there's any reason why it would replace us,
and if it did,
then it's not clear where it would get any kind of innovation from. Um,
so, you know, I don't think there's, um, uh, there, there's a,
a strong argument for any of these technologies at this point,
being genuinely creative in their own right.
But I think what they can do is to feed the creativity of
musicians by doing things that the musicians themselves wouldn't do and don't
expect.
One such musician is theoretical physicist and composer Maria
Minoni, who we'll hear from in a moment.
But April the 14th is World Quantum Day,
and the physics world team is joining forces with their journals and eBooks
colleagues at I O P publishing to celebrate all things Quantum,
the Physics World Weekly podcast, which I hope you all listen to,
as well as this one will have a quantum theme,
and the website will highlight a selection of quantum related feature articles,
interviews and analysis pieces.
Their colleagues in journals and eBooks will also be showcasing some of the best
quantum content and related eBooks will be offered at a discount.
So don't miss out on Quantum day celebrations at I O P publishing,
but now let's go to Maria. Man.
I have a master degree as a theoretical physicist, and then, uh,
I got other degrees in other disciplines, um, more in detail.
I study music conservatory where I study conducting composition
and piano,
and I got three other different dec degrees all school,
PAG school, I moved to Paris where I got, uh,
another master degree in, uh, computer science and acoustics,
Cigna processing applied to music between and
Perk.
And then I moved to the US where I got my PhD in music composition.
Then, uh,
for several years I traveled between the US and Japan for a collaboration.
And I currently working in Italy, uh,
two University of PAMA in my town in, uh, computer engineering.
And, uh,
I'm also collaborating with Kaska University of Venice.
Were you always interested in physics and music?
Yeah, in the first place, it was something pretty crucial, I'd say,
because I started studying music when, uh, I was 11,
uh, ish years old. Uh, but since my childhood,
I always been fascinated by that. And I study,
study physical university because I wanted to learn how nature
was working.
So I'm not sure if I precisely understood how nature was working,
but at least I think I had very interesting studies.
I had some professors who were interested in both topics,
who encouraged me to start like putting things
together. And little bedo, I started to, to find out,
um, to looking for, um,
the formal side in music and like the
statics sides in physics. In my master's thesis,
in music, in physics, sorry,
there was a chapter of music because a specific topic was
the measurement of the amount of memory in a system,
in a quantum system. And through some sweet adaptation,
I used this formula under supervision, my,
um, thesis, uh, advisor,
I adapted this formula to major the amount of
memory in a musical composition. And that worked. And, uh,
that works was recently, recently published.
What do you mean by memory and music?
So in music, actually, we have, yes,
we have time after time,
but our way to listen to music is not an instant
understanding.
Rather we have like chunks of time and
this something connected with the amount of musical repetition.
So for example,
we can have a theme or a court or a rhythm or something,
maybe something that has a duration in time, but pretty short.
So some, some unit which can be recognizable,
which can be recognized.
So the more the repetitions and the higher
the amount of memory in the sense of course,
if we have like a classic piece with a precise structure,
we are more likely to have repetition if we have some kind of more
random, like music, we have less, if we have a song,
usually we have some specific structure repetition.
So we have musical genre that have different
amounts usually in mean of memory,
but also different styles of composers and different pieces.
It is something which is related with our opposition of music because
we like to have somehow to have reation, oh, this is the theme, uh,
that is recalled in the fourth movement from the first movement of the symphony.
We got that because we are somehow driven by
cycles and things. If we have too much repetition, things are boring,
too predictable. If we have too few repetition,
we cannot really understand what is going on in a musical piece.
So it's something like a bit connected with aesthetics of the musical
piece.
Yeah, there's like a very big difference between, you know,
can't get you outta my Head by Kelly Mangan Les's Fifth Symphony
in, well, in every ways isn't, but what, which pieces did you use for the study.
In that study? We started during the, um, the thesis,
uh, man VA professor was,
professor Compan is a theoretical physicist who is returned
now, but recently published the paper together. We looked at, um,
first some classical music, bini, a song by Vincent Bini,
and then, um, Philip Gra and
more modern composers. However, the same structure,
uh,
of analysis might be applied different even to some pop music or
just piece provided that we have a recording and then we make
a transcription, uh,
other things with the separation of the different lines.
And yes,
for this very specific study we had made, um,
we need some kind of symbolic description. So the chime,
we have the onset, the pitches, loudness and duration.
We had considered this ailments, but now nevertheless,
we might extend this idea in a more sound processing domain.
So within that,
but there could be a research idea for some new stuff and maybe just working
with audio signal and uh,
and working directly with the recordings in this way,
even without the description, we can do that.
I think that it might be interesting to see not only examples of Western music,
but also other musics around the world and see if there are some kind
of pattern repetitions we might see.
So at the border with music information retrieval, which is a field in itself,
usually people work with a lot of musical PCs and use
auto completely automatic techniques to compare stuff.
But in that case,
the inspiration regarding memory was directly from physics,
because I was working with no mark of,
um, a system. Uh,
a time dynamics is Markov Ovn is if we have
a time dependencies, which is connected with some, uh,
former time Eastern,
but not with the entire previous time story.
However, when we have a non Ovn dynamics,
it means that we have, uh,
relevant effects of memory not connected with just the former time
Eastern. So,
and the was precise reform to analyze that,
because we might have two states in physics,
we that are different,
but if after the time evolution
they get more and more similar between them,
it means that we have lost the information regarding
their difference. So we lost to the memory in the sense, uh,
if they keep,
they are distant different at time zero and they still are
very different,
easy to be the yes to make some distinction.
Then we keep the information,
we keep memory in music kind of the opposite,
because if we have two musical passages,
which each are similar to each other, then we see, say that we have,
uh, great amount of memory.
So we just said to use the inverse fork for.
That. Has that changed the way you write music or listen to music?
Yes, yes. Because after this study,
that's funny that it was recently published, but it was like, uh,
10 years ago, uh, way before like the revival of quantum things. Um,
I start to make research in the domain of mathematics and music,
and I'm still are,
there is an entire community is not only me using several aspects
of math and physics and computer science to analyze music and to
create music in some sense. Um, um,
I,
I became more aware of what I was doing in music because even
when you just improvise, I'm also active as music improviser.
When improvised what you're doing, you are taking some elements,
you are making like a filtering, a selection.
Then you perform some variation, some elements you propose,
you take as input what the other guys in the band are doing and,
and the output you, you provide a new variation.
So when you start thinking music in terms of element and
transformation,
somehow you are already doing science because a big bunch of science is
connected with, uh,
functions or s maybe and seeing how we can transform some
material. How can we create variation?
So somehow I became more aware about that in some of my musical
composition. I directly took inspiration from science,
for example, I wanted to create some simple examples of stuff
once I worked with, uh,
branching and I composed a piece where everything was starting from a node
and then divided into two musical sequences,
then from one musical instrument to multiple one.
So it is like just, just divide in, uh,
into multiple elements.
Other times I just focused on the concept of, uh,
of sequence of transformation. Uh, for example was inspired by,
you know, the GUI as, uh,
a body constituted by several scales.
So a single scale is the theme, and you apply the repetition,
which is mathematical operation.
Then you apply a change of the envelope,
like following the shape of the animal. And again,
you can use math to describe this operation.
And I use this structure to build up a piece to
improvise as a scheme to improvise.
So I will say that, um,
science in general are a way of thinking,
which is between math and physics, I think that can provide,
uh, countless ideas for music making the same
way we can have a musical piece or in general
an artwork.
And we can use categories coming from scientists to analyze that.
But this is not something really new because people in the renaissance were
doing that were like putting stuff together.
And in different parts of history, they have been.
We also had philosopher who were artists, we were,
uh, scientists as well. Uh, good was a poet.
He was inspired by shapes in, uh,
in nature. He was trying to find, uh, the first plant.
So he was,
he was also performing some kind of scientific investigation with
both theoretical and experimental way of working.
So the, what I'm doing, um,
maybe is different from what other people are doing, but, um,
I, I think that there is some kind of beauty which is inside
nature. We are part of beauty as well.
So when we try to understand nature in something like,
um, some physicists said,
we are trying to find out the beauty which is hidden
inside nature. Um, and we are trying to make it art.
So maybe a key to understand the art is like getting to the roots,
but also [inaudible] um, the,
the famous Spanish architect Yes. Was thinking that way.
So maybe we are just, uh,
being inspired by nature at these different levels, maybe .
Yeah. But there are a few levels aren't there,
between a Pangolin and the quantum realm?
Yes, quantum music is something relatively new. But, uh,
I will say that, uh, this,
this is part of this search of this research of some
kind of roots of beauty.
There is something a bit more tricky here because when we can,
uh, see a tree, a man and animal,
they belong to our day experience.
Quantum does not because it's something that we can measure.
Of course we can think of course, but we do not see panta.
So something which is not intuitive,
it's something that also philosophically challenging our way of,
um,
of seeing the interaction between the measuring subject
and the measured world. So in this sense,
when we have quantum music, we cannot, uh, do, in my opinion,
a direct mapping because music is happening. Um,
in classical physics, let's say like that, we have longitudinal waves,
we have some dimensional scale, and on,
while the quantum is happening in a, in another , uh,
another dimension completely different. However,
we can borrow something from the quantum and bring in this
information in the real realm of music, for example. Um,
we can adapt as I, as I made years ago,
some criteria to major stuff in the quantum domain to the
musical domain. So considering like finite time intervals,
for example, we can use, um, quantum computers,
which are making, uh, measurement that we,
we can perform measurement, we can have a state,
we can apply a measurement, we can see what is the most like output.
We have quantum noise,
so we are getting a lot of quantitative information and we
can decide to map this quantitative information toward
sound.
But this operation of mapping is something that is
like between art and science,
because we have an information from the quantum, for example,
from computers, and the one that translate into another kind of information,
how the choice of how is also an artistic choice.
We might obtain a sonification just to have,
um, an idea which is we can make graphs.
We have the output of a quantum computation, we have a graph. Okay? The,
the output with 0 0 0 is more likely than the output with
0 1 1. Okay? So we have a graph with two different bars.
We can translate the information into sound. We might have a louder sound,
a softer sound.
So sonification can be used in a scientific way,
but we can use this information I map into a competitive
stuff. So in this sense, uh,
I think that's a quantum use is something that is starting to be
developed right now.
I think that we are only at the beginning of this new world,
I'd say.
Can you tell me a bit about your process as a composer?
Where does inspiration come from.
For you? Well, well, at least for me,
it can work in very different ways because I could be completely,
uh, could be completely taken by,
taken by an interesting result. For example,
I'm worked in a quantum circuit, for example,
for something in my work about robotics and then say, okay,
this very interest thing, how can, um,
how may I use sounds to,
to give an al auditor idea of that I, so for example,
can just set up some notes and imagine a quantum
not measure state as a court,
then the measurement is just giving one note. Also,
the people did that are not everyone.
In this sense,
I can use music as a way to gain a better understanding of what
is going on in science. Um,
I might also be part in a more say, metaphorical way.
Like is ago I wrote, uh, uh, maybe it was supported for future, uh,
uh, inspired by entanglement, but it was kind of loosey inspiration.
Just, uh, this idea of two, um,
of a state which is composed by parts which like locked together.
You measure the other one,
you force the other one to get a specific measure.
Other times I just compose in a more free way,
just all style, sit on the piano, paper and pencil. You write a song,
you can do that. And uh, that's in the sense,
uh, science can be a specific,
quantum can be used at a later time to, for example,
to, um, to develop the musical material.
As I said before, we can think of objects and transformations between them.
So for example, we have a theme and we keep,
um, modifying, transforming this theme in a sequence of variation,
which is something very classical.
But we can also think of that as a process which has a little
memory. So little be little.
We are like using the identity of the theme we have at the end of the
piece. We are left with a metic style, for example,
which is completely different from the elements we started with.
Sometimes I'm talking about magnificent thing because they have a,
a classic training. But, uh,
we can work also with other musical parameters and uh, play the same idea.
For example, we can have a mass of sound. So,
uh, like, um, there,
there are people we are working with concrete music and not only who are
working, for example, with timber,
which could be also generated electronically and so on.
And then we work by taking away the sound,
let's say like that. And we can compare this operation,
which is maybe,
which might be compared with some kind of subtractive syntheses. I said that.
But we can have, uh, a bunch of different sounds playing together.
Then we do something and then we are left with some one chord,
only one chord. The some a small part of this sound. Okay,
but this could be compared with what,
with the concept of destructive measure in quantum mechanics.
So, and we have a state then,
uh, uh, physical system,
then we force the system to have just one value and all
subsequent measurements, we have that value. So in this sense,
the quantum can enter inside music not only
a levels of precise formulas at the levels of
outputs of quantum computer, but even at,
I think at a more ground level of concepts.
Because first of all, uh,
I think part of the beauty of this kind of physics is that something, as I said,
not intuitive is something that is contin. Even if you studied that for years,
it's always challenging quantum mechanics.
All I remember study many sago universe.
Then I took Sarah crucial advanced quantum mechanics,
quantum fee theory,
where you apply the quantization not only to the energy, but also to the field.
It's like having, uh, field the nausea, which is made by,
um, by particles, let's say that.
And you extend all the mathematics over in, over, which is quite fascinating.
So they are really the challenging ideas.
And I think that also this idea can inspire art. Why not?
Art is made of ideas.
It's not important if you are writing a p the piano with, uh,
synthesize or whatever we are thinking. First of.
All, I hope you don't mind me asking,
but is quantum music ever going to be anything more than
something that's, you know,
interesting for people who are interested in the intersection of science and
music for composers, uh, and for,
well just for a very niche audience?
Ah, well that's a great question. So I'm glad if, uh,
we could, uh, talk again of this question in the next 10 years,
let's say like that. Because I think that we are, we,
at the beginning of this course, I see a lot of enthusiasm, which is fine.
I hope that that will last for some time. I don't know yet.
For now,
it's kind of a restrictive thing because usually there are
either physicists or computer scientists or composers or
kind of a quantum superposition of all these guys. Were trying to,
um, see things together,
which is good because I sometimes I see compo composition can also
be an act of an experiment. Um,
you can either compose a song in the style, it's that,
or, uh, you can, uh, make, um, uh,
more experimental study. So for now, we have a lot of experimental works.
Very interesting. We have, uh,
some of these works also made to the concerts. There are, um,
works directly deriv derived from fin um, quantum computers,
which are very, very interesting. Uh, remember the name right now.
But that comes to mind very, very interesting. Uh,
musical works by, um, professor Mirana, for example,
and not only the several people who work with that, okay,
from now it's some GS three.
So I will make distinction between maybe three layers,
the layer of, um,
experiment. So you have something new,
you wanna see what is going on, and you make the experiment. And in this class,
I also consider in my own experiment, when I use Logic Gates,
for example,
to determine if we will have some notes or some other ones
as the response to some kind of external info, this experiment,
they could be nice to hear or not. Uh, when I write experimental music,
I don't always consider that nice to hear,
but just maybe it could be nice to see if it is interesting or not.
Then, um,
they can be the quantum applied in a more systematic way
to create a new genre of music.
I think we are on the way there, people who are going that direction,
but I think that we are still at the beginning, uh,
of this world and, uh,
personally I think that will require one more thinkings about what we are
taking from the quantum world. Okay.
The other side is that we listen to music because we like music.
Uh, we can move the way music, we can be comfort converted by music. We can,
we have several different reasons in the sense it's much harder to
find out what is the impact of the quantum world,
um, regarding aesthetics of music. I see. But that's, that's me.
Um, I think that inside nature there are some roots of beauty.
We have to find them because we might have perfect mathematics and
perfectly bad music or vice versa. So it's not given that,
um, if we have some kind of math things,
we will have some beautiful art.
There are different use already Hask was thinking about of
the beauty music and it was like very opposite to some kind of more rational
thing. I don't think that way, but I think that's important to understand.
Some reason there are people in the cognitive science who investigating
why do we like what we like, for example, uh,
my way of seeing things that we like music, there are some, uh, some connection,
for example, uh,
with the images you create in the mind of there is a kind of gestural
connection. Like you hear a very soft music,
you think of a caressing gesture. That that is my,
if we were able to find out, um,
some of the reason why a musical piece is a beautiful musical
piece and we are able to formalize all the stuff
with the quant,
with the mathematics that used for the quantum physics,
then we can use the quantum to make beautiful stuff.
I don't think we are now at this point.
That could be a research question. Maybe we could never achieve that. But,
uh, I think that could be a nice challenge.
Oh yeah, that, that sounds very interesting.
Yeah. , more people could be fascinated by science at this point.
Well, it sounds like it may be sometime before people are saying that quantum is
massive,
but I want to leave you with a bit more of Maria's music entitled
3D Underwater Robots.
This is an experiment with computer sounds and the sonification of quantum
driven robotic movements.
Quantum music is sometimes very short.
Thank you very much to Maria and Philip for talking to me for this episode of
the Physics World Stories podcast. You can find links to Maria's work,
and of course,
Philip's work on the article that accompanies this podcast on the physics world
website physics world.com.
Thanks again to FIFA Vacuum for sponsoring this episode of the podcast.
FIFA Vacuum provides all types of vacuum equipment,
including hybrid and magnetically levitated, turbo pumps,
leak detectors and analysis equipment,
as well as vacuum chambers and systems.
You can explore all of its products@pfahyphenvacuum.com.
We'll be back next month with something else from this wonderful world of
physics. And thank you very much for listening.
Physics.
World.