Techniques are described in which a qubit is far off-resonantly, or dispersively, coupled to a quantum mechanical oscillator. In particular, a dispersive coupling between a physical qubit and a quantum mechanical oscillator may be selected such that control of the combined qubit-oscillator system can be realized. The physical qubit may be driven with an electromagnetic pulse (e.g., a microwave pulse) and the quantum mechanical oscillator simultaneously driven with another electromagnetic pulse, the combination of which results in a change in state of the qubit-oscillator system.