Jamming with a Quantum Computer: A musical journey into quantum computing

Описание: Musical improvisation is the creative activity of composing music "in the moment" while performing it, often in a jam session with other musicians. Although composing and performing music is a creative process, the underlying musical style informs the probabilities of note and rhythmic choices that the musician makes. For example, when improvising in the style of twelve-bar blues, the notes played with the highest frequency of occurrence are typically the five that comprise the corresponding minor pentatonic scale.

This idea of musical style being a complex system of probabilities fits perfectly with the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, which is a phenomenon leveraged by quantum computing. To implement this idea, James Weaver created an open source application named Quantum Music Composer that makes use of a quantum computer to improvise music in a very simplified version of 17th century counterpoint.

In this session, James will give an introduction to quantum computing, cover a bit of music theory, and demonstrate how a quantum computer can compose music and participate in a musical jam session. He will then discuss the development and implementation of the Quantum Music Composer application on IBM, and Rigetti, quantum computers.