Can ‘quantum musical agents’ really make a melody better?

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

Quantum jam

The history of popular music is, in part, a history of technology. From George Beauchamp inventing the electric guitar to whoever came up with the wobble bass that was briefly ubiquitous in dubstep, what we listen to has been shaped by inventive engineers.

Feedback was therefore intrigued to receive a tip-off from reporter Karmela Padavic-Callaghan about “music-making on the future quantum Internet”. Karmela directed our attention to a paper published on 5 August called “Teleportation game: Quantum teleportation in multi-agent systems for interactive music”. It was published in a scientific journal with the gloriously all-encompassing title International Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems.

It sees the researchers introduce “an interactive music system with quantum musical agents that communicate by teleporting quantum states to one another”. Basically, you play a musical phrase or piece and the recording is given to a set of quantum computers. They then process it in some quantum way and output a modified version of the recording.

Feedback isn’t going to pretend to understand what the quantum computers are doing. The paper informs us that “melodic and rhythmic behaviours are encoded as quantum states using Single Qubit Probability Amplitude Modulation (SQPAM) and structured through Quantum Phase Estimation (QPE)”, and that up to three agents “are combined within a single quantum circuit, with directed communication via quantum teleportation”.

Curious to know who came up with this, Feedback looked up the lead author.
Eduardo Miranda is a composer and computer scientist who has created music using everything from brain-computer interfaces to slime moulds and, latterly, quantum computers. In 2024, he released an album called QUBISM, entirely created using quantum computers.

Feedback listened to a couple of tracks and was mildly bemused. Opener Lumina Grooves 1 is built around cheery xylophone-like notes: it sounds like something you would hear in an elevator or, perhaps, as background music for a wildlife documentary about marine invertebrates. In contrast, Spinnings uses eerie mechanical groans and could be an off-cut from the soundtrack to Blade Runner 2049.

We really wanted to know what the quantum musical agents in the new paper came up with, but the study doesn’t include any audio, so we don’t know. However, Feedback did note that the authors developed the agents to support “ambiguous, transformative interactions reminiscent of free Jazz improvisation” and that their system is one “in which divergence and ambiguity are tolerated”. To crib a line from the late, great Tom Lehrer, we think this means the quantum agents play a wrong note every now and then.

A review of thousands of scientific papers about quantum computers finds that most don’t provide code that can be tested on independent devices or that the code doesn’t work

Quality water

Jonathan Stoppi was driving around Canada when he spotted, and photographed, a van belonging to a local business. It was advertising water, but not just any water. This water offers “superior hydration”. At first, we thought this meant it was wetter than other water, but there was more blurb to come.

It turns out this water is better than other water because it is “alkaline”, “anti-oxidant” and “hydrogen-rich”. This made Feedback’s head spin, because the defining feature of acids is that they release lots of hydrogen ions, also known as protons. We are therefore unclear how this water can be both hydrogen-rich and alkaline. We are also unclear how water can be an antioxidant.

Fortunately, there was a breadcrumb trail for us to follow. The vehicle in Jonathan’s photo had a URL on it, which Feedback bravely typed into our browser. It led us to a website about “Kangen Water”, which, as well as seemingly being hydrogen-rich and all the other stuff, also has a “negative ORP” – something that is apparently “preferred for oral consumption”. Deeper into the site, we learn that “This electrolytically-reduced, hydrogen-rich water works to restore your body to a more alkaline state, which is optimal for good health”.

We were also told that “Kangen Water may give freshness and life to plants”. Feedback wonders if that is the most load-bearing “may” ever written.

Then, a faint memory flickered in our mind. Scouring past columns, we realised we had written about the supposed health benefits of “alkaline water” as early as 2011,
revisited the topic in 2012 and delved into the health benefits of “hexagonal water” earlier this year (28 March). This had faded from our consciousness, but not, it seems, from the minds of those eager to sell you overpriced water.

Water is essential for good brain function, with a handful of convincing studies suggesting that dehydration could be slowing you down, cognitively speaking. Columnist Helen Thomson explores how much water we should be drinking to stay sharp

Quality assurance

In our 12 August missive, we noted an embarrassing incident that befell the Stroke Association charity. Their name was truncated by a “suggested follow” box on social media, which didn’t have enough space for the “ociation” bit, creating an unfortunate two-word phrase.

Reader Pete Lloyd was reminded of a reorganisation at his workplace, which resulted in one of his friends becoming the quality assurance manager. The organisational chart didn’t have enough space to display three such long words, however, so the HR team abbreviated it by removing the “urance” and the “ager”. “I felt compelled to tell him so he could ask HR to update the chart,” says Pete.

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