A little pause...
and we are back.
A little pause...
A little pause...
A little pause...
A little pause... and we are back.
A little pause... and we are back.
A little pause... and we are back.
A little pause...
and we are back.
A little pause... and we are back.
That was my quantum improvisation system called Lengage.
And technically it is listening to me in real time and I am able to play with it and musically communicate with it.
And it will respond to me sometimes and sometimes it will do its own thing.
So usually when we do NPHD performances, I am usually playing with my colleague Dr.
Omar Tosa-Hamido.
So it is usually he is playing saxophone and I am playing flute.
And in our recent album we are usually playing those songs from there.
It starts out with us playing acoustically and then that was pretty much the second song in the track.
But I won't be playing the third song in the track because usually Vineyard plays with his quantum synthesizer.
But he is not here today and I don't have his quantum synthesizer.
But I will take a little break.
If anybody has any questions, I am available to answer them.
How long have you been playing?
Probably about 13-14 years I think.
You are doing great.
Oh, thank you.
So you say it is listening to you.
Is it translating it to MIDI and then doing a MIDI or is it pitch shifting?
So it is actually doing some music information retrieval functions on it.
So it is taking different musical features out of itself.
It might take the signal energy from my playing or it might take pitch estimation and use that as a reference for how far it should go away and how far it should stay within the realm of what I am doing.
And then I have I guess a couple other musical features for like brightness of the tone I am playing and things like that.
And I am kind of looking into different ways of sending different information.
Are you pre-setting pitch parameters, key parameters at all or do you just keep it completely open?
It is completely open at the moment.
Especially in jazz improvisation, it is kind of hard to keep it open.
Two questions, but they are related.
Is it trying to track your tempo at all?
And the other question is what is the lifetime?
It is tracking my tempo every so often, but that is not part of the quantum algorithm.
That is more of a classical kind of algorithm.
I do want to try to incorporate that into the circuit, but the circuit is actually kind of big enough as it is and I don't think I can fit it in at the moment.
But yeah, the current state of quantum computers, I kind of hit the max that they will allow for the general public to know.
But yeah.
Is it a max for live?
So, I didn't pay for max for live, but I am using just the full max software and then I am feeding it into Ableton kind of manually.
Yeah.
I think I will continue.
I guess since this is jazz, I will kind of figure out from here.
There is some stuff at the end that I do want to get into more of the system, but I will kind of go back to work and play along with some of the effects and some of the other stuff.
So, here we go.
So, here we go.
So, here we go.
So, here we go.
So, here we go.
So,
here we go.
So, here we go.
So, here we go.
So,
here we go.
So,
So ,
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go.
Here we go
.
That's pretty much what I have here, guys.
Unless you guys want to hear anything specific.
I was working on another application today as I was waiting for this performance, but it's still not quite working yet.
Does anybody have any more questions?
During the transition of that last song, there was a decay of four different layers.
Does that represent the deep wave, or is it just my imagination for the energy compression?
So, half of this performance is just straight electronics.
And then the other half is being controlled by the actual system.
But, this is actually using a simulator, so it's not using a specific computer at the moment, because getting there and back is... yeah.
But, the system, the parameters of that system was built on some example data to the system, using some of IBM's own computers.
So , yeah.
So, ideally, it could just be a plug and chug, if they, you know, have the capability of this, then use it.
But, no.
Yeah.
Any of the sounds generated, were they pitch tracked to what you were playing?
Or was it just emulating what you were playing?
Or was it quantized after the fact to some scale, whatever you were playing in?
So, it's using... this is actually my dissertation research, but it has a lot of different components in it.
But, in terms of pitch, let's say I have... so, the system will do an estimation, right?
It hears 50% chances of B, 50% chances of A, or maybe another note in there with another percent chance, whatever.
So, you're sort of using Markov chains or something like that?
No, not Markov chains, but I'm using... it takes it in and gives it a wave function.
Okay.
Yeah, and it says, okay, it's in all these notes I'm perceiving at the same time.
But the second that it measures it to execute the actual note, it collapses to one of them.
Okay .
Yeah, and then it has some kind of way of saying, like, okay, this is the target pitch I'm going for.
And then it kind of looks up the energy of the qubit and says, how far do I have to get there to get to the pitch?
Or am I going in another direction?
Does the last track have drums in it?
Yeah, so the system is actually playing the drum set, so yeah.
Nice.
Wow.
Yeah.
And how does it go between generating just sound and generating a drum tempo?
Is it intentional?
So it's actually just playing software instruments.
Okay.
So it's like sending, yeah, so it's sending...
Like a MIDI instrument.
Yeah, it's sending MIDI information to the instruments, but yeah.
So there's many layers of quantum and processing going in with it to bring out a really... because it was really multi-layered performance.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah , brilliant.
Yeah.
Okay, go ahead.
So I wanted to ask if eventually quantum should be able to play music that regular computers can't.
Is there anything about that?
My philosophy on that is, well, there is a subfield right now.
I don't know how much you guys know of this.
So there is a group of researchers, not a large set of them, but they are looking into building quantum computer music applications.
But right now they are kind of focusing on what capabilities we have currently that are transferable to quantum computers.
So we don't know if it will give us an advantage or not, or if it might be able to play music better than a classical computer.
But my thought is, especially with jazz, it's just so many different elements.
And I think there is more language in quantum computers than there are in classical, which I mean...
Do you find when you are playing jazz with a quantum computer, there is a level of feedback?
Because when you play jazz live, there is a feedback between you and the other musicians.
Do you find that the quantum... and I can guess someone's personality through how they feedback to me.
I get a feel for that.
Does a quantum computer have a personality?
A jazz personality?
It has an image of my personality.
An image of you.
So I don't know if you guys have ever heard of George Lewis.
George Lewis has a computer improvisation system.
He has nothing to do with quantum.
He made this back in the day.
He was very groundbreaking at the time.
But this system is actually inspired off of his system, which is called Voyager.
And that's an actual real-time improvisation system that many jazz musicians have played with and have discussed about.
Does it have a personality?
Is it actually... what is actually going on here?
And George Lewis has always said, it's a reflection of myself.
I consider a composition as a reflection of myself, and it has my philosophies of improvisation within it.
Fascinating.
Could you just tell us some more general knowledge about how to go about using the quantum in instruments?
So, I guess for me, it's a different approach than what most of the field is doing.
So , a good example would be my other bandmate, Omar.
Omar, he's actually in Portugal, so it was kind of difficult to get him down here this time when we performed in New York.
But his quantum synthesizer is using different algorithms to generate for different parameters of the synthesizer, actually.
And to actually use the superposition for different waveforms that the synthesizer can generate.
There are other applications for pitch estimation, or melody generation, and things like that.
But anything that you can do with classical computing, there is probably a way you can adapt it to quantum computing.
So it's mostly like mapping your output from your quantum computer onto a classical machine, I would say.
I don't know if that answers your question or not, I'm sorry.
So the source of the randomness, you have the quantum computing, but it's being simulated, right?
Is it possible, have you thought about using a true source of quantum randomness, like a Geiger counter or something like that?
Not really.
I kind of just was using, when the kids came out at the moment, I really wanted to just run on actual hardware.
Because the simulator for me is not actually giving it the actual experience of using the actual quantum hardware.
It's just a matter of logistics, I guess, on the company's side.
But yeah, the simulator to me is not the most I take on.
What kind of level of randomness is brought in versus the entropy of being able to move beyond what you're at?
Because I saw within the performance I heard, as it was starting to run away with a lot of energy, you could slowly bring it back.
Or as it was getting a little lower, you would slowly bring in more energy.
So do you have parameters there, and can you widen those and make it more random?
Yeah, so besides tempo, which is not quantum at all in this case, a lot of the parameters I'm using that are being extracted from here, I use those metrics on the quantum gates, on the actual quantum gates or the actual rotations.
So it's actually taking into consideration inside the actual algorithm, the quantum algorithm, what I'm doing.
So it's building a state of what it could possibly do based off what I'm doing.
This is more like a philosophical slash artistic question.
In the perspective of the science and engineering, do you find a superposition when you identify the artistic component with the engineering component?
I'm sorry, can you do the last question?
I don't know.
I would say so.
I've actually gotten a lot of feedback, especially when I came to the...
when I was trying to finish my dissertation and things, I was having a lot of issues with it getting to sound.
So the first iteration, this was not as flexible, I would say.
It was very stagnant.
It was kind of mostly based on pitch.
It didn't really have any kind of change in tempo or change in energy or anything.
But a lot of feedback I got from musicians that nothing, mostly about...
They were tech savvy, but they didn't know what's happening underneath the hood of anything.
They were kind of like, you also have to remember this is also an artistic project.
You can get lost in the weeds of building the sound.
So you can have all these fancy algorithms, which I was technically trying to do, but it ultimately meant nothing in the end.
So it's kind of like a balance between what are the tools and algorithms I can use for a specific purpose.
If it's not being used for a specific purpose, and it's just in there for more efficiency or something, then it kind of gets away from the artistic side.
If there are no more questions, please do thank Scott.
Thank you.
Thank you very much everyone.
We hope you've enjoyed the most cultured...
I also have a...
I do have a flyer, I wasn't able to print them out, but me and Omar are having a couple of listening parties next Saturday and the Saturday after that on Bandcamp.
So you'll be able to hear the whole album and you can decide if you want to buy it.
I do have a QR code for anybody who wants to check out the album.
You can also just type in nphd.space and it'll take you guys to our rep website.
But also, on September 2nd, we're having a telematic performance of the album as well, if you guys are interested in it.
And you can find that information on our rep page, which is nphd.needspace.
That in space?
That space.
Yeah, just space.
We'll put it on the Twitter.
Everyone, thank you very much.
Thank you Scott.