Musical Instruments by TL?

[Pragmatic]

I have read that the Low Tech supplement contains the various musical instruments to somewhere in the 1700s. Does it list the instruments by TL? And what of musical instruments beyond TL 4?

[Kelly Pedersen]

Low-Tech itself has some musical instruments (p. 49), and provides TLs for them. Low-Tech Companion 1: Philosophers and Kings has a much longer list (pp. 17-19), but doesn't provide TLs. However, you can probably make a good guess on which TLs instruments belong to by comparing them to the list in Low-Tech. It also mentions a couple of other instruments and gives TLs for them, as examples of the post-TL 4 instruments it doesn't cover.

High-Tech does not have any musical instruments. Ultra-Tech mentions the psychosonic instrument, but that's about it for music there.

The article "Remixing the Rocker", in Pyramid #3/85, goes into future music, though it's more about how it can be used in the campaign, and various things to do with music generally, and doesn't present any new instruments.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

I have read that the Low Tech supplement contains the various musical instruments to somewhere in the 1700s. Does it list the instruments by TL? And what of musical instruments beyond TL 4?

It has a long list of instruments skills, with a few examples of instruments that would be used with each skill, and the defaults to other musical instrument skills (Lute includes the lute, mandolin, and sitar, among others, and has a default to Guitar and a slightly worse default to other chordophones). The only comments of TL are a few mentions of specific items that didn't appear until TL5+.

[whswhs]

The two classes of musical instruments that would definitely be added after TL4 are Valved Brass (developed at TL5 and brought into orchestral use by Richard Wagner, among others) and Electrophones (such as the theremin; the electronic organ is just Keyboard).

The system is largely based on the Hornbostel-Sachs classification, which you can look up on Wikipedia; the big change is that keyboard instruments are made into their own category, since regardless of the mechanism by which the sound is produced, the player is interfacing with a set of keys. The Wikipedia article gives links to many articles on specific types of instruments.

I didn't attempt to give TLs for instruments, because these are highly culturally specific, and for TL0-4 often the date of invention is unknown. What I recommend is either looking up a specific instrument, like zither or panpipes or shofar, and judging what category to fit it into, or looking at a category that seems interesting and making up instruments in that category to fit an invented culture.

[Phantasm]

I came up with a gdoc at some point as an outline for musical instruments in modern (TL7-8) musical ensembles. This lists the instruments themselves, not their classifications; most are easily figured out, however.

The biggest change I'd add is adding "Trap Set (H)" to either Membranophones or Idiophones to represent playing tuned drums, untuned drums, tuned percussion, and untuned percussion at the same time.

Bill, would you count a rap DJ's turntable for scratching as an "instrument", and if so how would you classify it?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

regardless of the mechanism by which the sound is produced, the player is interfacing with a set of keys

Synthesizers probably rate their own skill, or an additional skill. Just playing them isn't very different from other keyboards, but creating the patches to give them different sounds requires some technical knowledge about how various circuits make waveforms. You can fool around and stumble across things by trial and error, but it's a pretty big search space. There's at least a familiarization penalty for different hardware.

There's also probably an Electronic Ops skill for a modern digital keyboard. MIDI cables, built-in sequencers, recording playback, flash drive storage, external computer interfaces and software, selecting predefined patches, all sorts of things you don't have on a traditional acoustic piano. Not the sort of thing that would come up in a game context a lot, though.

[JazzJedi]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Synthesizers probably rate their own skill, or an additional skill. Just playing them isn't very different from other keyboards, but creating the patches to give them different sounds requires some technical knowledge about how various circuits make waveforms. You can fool around and stumble across things by trial and error, but it's a pretty big search space. There's at least a familiarization penalty for different hardware.

There's also probably an Electronic Ops skill for a modern digital keyboard. MIDI cables, built-in sequencers, recording playback, flash drive storage, external computer interfaces and software, selecting predefined patches, all sorts of things you don't have on a traditional acoustic piano. Not the sort of thing that would come up in a game context a lot, though.

At TL7+ the Electronics Operation (Audio) would be that skill, which would also cover operation of sound boards, microphones, monitors, etc., which are all fairly related, and heavily dependent on familiarization.

[Pursuivant]

It seems pretty simple for the GM to work out.

If it can easily be manufactured from materials readily found in nature, it's TL0 (e.g., bone flute, certain types of slap drums).

If it requires simple metal-working or relatively simple woodworking, it's TL1 (e.g., cymbals, straight trumpets, simple stringed instruments).

If it requires fine woodworking, glasswork, or metalworking, or simple clockwork or machining, it's TL2 or TL3 (e.g., wooden reed instruments, curved brass instruments like tubas, lutes, thumb pianos*, glass harmonica*).

If it requires a clockwork, hydraulic, or pneumatic power source (e.g., bellows, crank) or skilled metalworking, it's TL3 or 4. (e.g., bellows organ)

If it requires steam power, steel strings, and/or carefully machined parts its TL4 or 5. (e.g., modern guitar or concert harp, harpsichord or piano).

If it requires electrical power and very simple electrical components, it's TL6 (e.g., the theramin, the electric guitar).

If it requires more complex electronics, it's TL7 (e.g., the electric organ, early synthesizers).

If it requires a computer, it's TL8 (e.g., drum machines, advanced keyboards, music composition programs).

If it requires a supercomputer, a neural interface, or some other superscience gadget, it's TL9+

* Yes, these instruments were historically invented at later TL, but they could have been developed at a lower TL given the technology involved.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by JazzJedi

At TL7+ the Electronics Operation (Audio) would be that skill, which would also cover operation of sound boards, microphones, monitors, etc., which are all fairly related, and heavily dependent on familiarization.

Or, Musical Instrument (Synthesizer) with El Ops/TL (Media) as a prerequisite.

Sound mixing, etc. might be a Professional Skill (DJ, Foley Editor, or Sound Engineer).

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by JazzJedi

At TL7+ the Electronics Operation (Audio) would be that skill, which would also cover operation of sound boards, microphones, monitors, etc., which are all fairly related, and heavily dependent on familiarization.

That's a skill I'd give to roadies, studio technicians, and stage techs. True, dedicated synthesizer players would also learn the skill as well, but it's not stuff that would be covered by Musical Instrument (Keyboard).

Part of me is wondering if the keytar and its forerunner the orphica fall under Keyboard or have their own specialty.