Typing Quantum Music into a search engine throws up various ideas, projects and theories related between music and quantum physics.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around as i have little quantum physics understanding so thought i’d introduce it here to see if anyone can break down the possibilities in the future of quantum computing with music creation/production/performance. Layman’s terms if possible.
Some sites talk about an audience potentially experiencing the same piece of quantum music but in completely different ways, which i barely grasp but seems exciting.
What applications, with the ability to process billions of calculations a second, could result in new areas of sound design, generative music, (brain linked!?) input devices that will be vastly different to what already exists?
The title had me concerned, as often people throw “quantum” in front of words to make it sound advanced when it’s actually complete bullshit (think Deepak Chopra). Thankfully some of this didn’t sound as crazy, but it didn’t really interest me that much.
What’s important to remember is that quantum mechanics fundamentally only affects small systems and you will not be able to directly observer or experience quantum mechanical phenomena. Thus, “quantum music” will most likely be music that is generated by classical systems that are programmed to mimic some quantum mechanical effects, or are inspired by quantum mechanics in some way.
For example, an audience “experiencing the same piece of quantum music but in completely different ways” would in this case be nothing more than each person wearing separate headphones, and for each event in the music (such as a note being played), a random event from some given pool will be chosen (e.g. a random note from a predefined scale), because this sort of resembles a quantum system’s wave function collapsing to a single state.
i’m really trying to extrapolate the concept into the far future here rather than right now.
"[Quantum machine learning] will give game developers an opportunity to create experiences that adapt to human input over time. In massively multiplayer scenarios, quantum-powered machine learning will be able to analyze the behaviors of legions of gamers, and create experiences that challenge us better collectively, while adapting to each player’s unique style of play.
Large numbers of on-screen game-controlled enemies is a great example where another form of quantum advantage can help us: true randomness, powered by nature’s own subatomic behaviors. We’ve all played games where hordes are unleashed and scores of baddies spawn in patterns that feel random at first, but over time give way to programmatic patterns. This, in turn, hurts replay-ability. In a world where truly random behaviors can be informed by quantum processes, we can create environments, and scores of enemies, that feel natural in their behaviors even over infinite periods of play."
imagine working with a reactive daw or system/machine, maybe i’m getting blurred with AI but that seems to be inevitably dependent on quantum computing to self proliferate.
Yeah, I think one should focus their hype onto machine learning in general instead of specifically quantum machine learning in that case. I’m sure AI has got a long way to go before it has to depend on quantum computing to advance anywhere.
I’m not sure I agree with the second part of that quote. I strongly doubt that pseudo-random numbers used in games would ever give rise to any noticeable pattern, and so there’s no need for quantum-based randomness in games. If “programmatic patterns” are experienced, they’re far more likely to emerge from actual patterns, because not everything that controls (in this case) enemy spawning is governed by pseudo-random numbers but are also governed by many more non-random processes. Sure I’m open to counter-examples, but this is my first thought.
Of course anything can happen in the future, and I’m sure it’ll be awesome, but there’s really no way of knowing what will happen so I tend to stay focused on the now or near future rather than start speculating about centuries later. Reading other people’s speculations is often fun though
