Skill for building musical instrument?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Cursed_Lich

It's the second time I'm not sure about the same topic and this one didn't reach a conclusion. All these years later, does anyone has any idea of which skill(s) is(are) used to build musical instruments?

My take these days is Machinist. It's the skill you'd use for high precision work in multiple materials for anything else, and musical instruments actually *are* "tools for use with another skill", which is explicitly what the skill covers.

[Phantasm]

I personally go with Mechanic (Musical Instrument Type) myself. Mechanic is meant to be the go-to skill for building/repairing items that don't fall under Armoury or Electronics Repair, after all. To be fair, though, I'd probably use Electronics Repair for electric synthesizers and the electronics of electric guitars, but for making drums, pianos, saxophones, clarinets, trumpets, violins, string basses, and acoustic guitars, especially since most of those have some really fiddly bits, Mechanic seems the best fit.

I may use Machinist or Carpentry for making some of the parts, but I wouldn't use them for fitting the multitude of strings and hammers properly in a piano or the tight and sometimes overlapping levers on oboes, clarinets, and saxes.

And speaking from experience putting a hand-me-down clarinet back together with super-glue and precision screwdrivers (my kid sister took it apart to annoy me when I was in middle school), High Manual Dexterity comes in very handy.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Making a violin, or a Boehm flute, or a valved brass instrument, doesn't strike me as a hobby. I think it's Professional Skill.

Certainly it's work done by highly skilled professionals. But not all professional work is done with unique Professional skills. There's over a hundred skills already defined, many of which are used by highly skilled professionals in their various jobs, not just "adventurers". Few archaeologists or historians are actually Indiana Jones in the middle of one of his adventures, yet they don't have Professional Skill (Archaeology) or PS (History) in place of of Archaeology (B176) or History (B200). In my opinion, "Professional Skill" (B215) is just a catch-all in case you need some skill not already defined -- a way of formalizing the fact that you can invent a new skill if you have to to cover something the pre-defined list didn't have.

I'm in the camp that sees no reason to invent yet another skill for making things from wood or from metal. We already have those. Difficult of the project is handled with a TDM, just like difficulty of any task for any skill.

Projects that somehow call for multiple materials simply require multiple skills (just like in real life), which might or might not call for multiple workers. The GURPS system is fine-grained, not one where there's a one-and-done wildcard skill encompassing everything for each profession.

[ericthered]

I do think there is enough uniqueness to the process of building a musical instrument to justify a specialized skill. Acoustics are weird, and very few professions deal with them. Whether you call that "Mechanic (Musical instrument)" or "Professional Skill (Musical instrument)" doesn't really matter to me, but I object to the idea that you can take any world class cabinet maker and teach him to make high quality violins in two weeks, which is what familiarity penalties would imply.



That said, I'm not opposed to letting carpentry do the job, so long as the acoustic training is represented by some skill.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by ericthered

That said, I'm not opposed to letting carpentry do the job, so long as the acoustic training is represented by some skill.

I agree. I could see a carpenter using his skill to put together an instrument in form, but the acoustics would likely be awful. Likewise, I wouldn't call on a luthier to raise a structurally sound roofing truss.

Creating instruments is truly an art of its own, and I'd make it a unique skill, whether based on Machinist or Professional Skill or Artist or something else.

From there, cross-defaults with Carpentry or Artist (Woodworking) sound all right to me (if still generous where those acoustics are concerned).

(Incidentally, Low-Tech and Low-Tech Companion 1 go into some detail on musical instruments. But unless I'm missing it, they don't suggest the skills involved in crafting/repair.)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by tbone

(Incidentally, Low-Tech and Low-Tech Companion 1 go into some detail on musical instruments. But unless I'm missing it, they don't suggest the skills involved in crafting/repair.)

No, they don't, because it was kind of a complicated question and space was limited.

But it seems to me that the key issue is not "Do you need multiple skills to represent this task?" I agree that it's not reasonable to come up with a series of new Professional skills that lump together multiple existing skills to produce a less cluttered character sheet and save character points. We have the skill of Soldier, but that's not the same thing; a soldier needs a modest competence in a number of routine tasks in fields such as radio operation, weapons maintenance, and camping. But a musical instrument maker's skills are not "routine"; working with wood and glue to make a violin is really challenging, at the level more of Artist (Woodworking) than of Carpentry.

But the key issue is whether there is a core competence required for performing tasks that existing skills don't cover at all. And for making musical instruments, that core competence is understanding the acoustical behavior of materials and shapes. There really is no existing skill for that. You can use Physics to approach it theoretically, but theoretical analysis only goes so far; you need an intuitive understanding of things you can't look up in books of tables, one shaped by practical experience in working with actual instruments. And that's even more true under low-tech conditions, where there's no more than an embryonic science of acoustics anyway—Pythagoras's discovery of the pitch-length relationship for the monochord was brilliant, but it doesn't generalize to tuned drums or to bells, for example.

There's a tendency to treat every type of device as if it were an application of Engineer skill. But for most of history, and all of prehistory, there wasn't really a regular profession of "engineer" or "technological device designer." And a lot of the devices people used were really simply systems figured out empirically, without power sources (other than human or animal muscle) or elaborate mechanical linkages; their design was a craft, not a science. Even houses are designed with Architecture, not with Engineer (Habitations).

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Acoustics are weird, and very few professions deal with them...I object to the idea that you can take any world class cabinet maker and teach him to make high quality violins in two weeks

That's true of any speciality. Networking routers are weird, and I'd object to the idea that you can take any world-class web programmer and teach them how to make reliable embedded software for networking gear in two weeks -- or vice versa. But we don't create unique skills, or even mandatory specialities, for every single niche application of every single skill, even though they all have unique knowledge and behaviors. We say both those people have Computer Programming, and move on. Anyone with that sort of specialized knowledge of any niche could no doubt cite a long list of unique things about it. That's why it's identifiable as a niche. But going down that path means reducing the grain size of the GURPS skill list even more. We'll need (conservatively) thousands of skills / specialties if we want to go that route.

If you do want to model that sort of hyper-specialized knowledge, then that would be an additional skill on top of the base skills, not in replacement of it -- Carpentry plus Advanced Carpentry (Stringed Instruments) and Advanced Carpentry (Cabinetry). The violin maker isn't as helpless when faced with an unusual need to make a cabinet as (say) I would be, so saying "you don't have the right skill, default to IQ-4" isn't right. With the existing rules structure, we're talking really just talking specialties just to avoid creating a long list of cross-defaults required between This Professional Skill and That Professional Skill, but not Yonder Professional Skill -- and likely not mandatory specialties.

In any event, it seems unlikely that most games would need to model the fine distinctions between a cabinet maker and a violin maker. (Though there's always that GM running the Life and Times of the Carpentry Guild campaign, where that's the only distinction between characters' master skills, they can easily enough houserule a zoomed-in skill list appropriate for their focused campaign.)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

In any event, it seems unlikely that most games would need to model the fine distinctions between a cabinet maker and a violin maker. (Though there's always that GM running the Life and Times of the Carpentry Guild campaign, where that's the only distinction between characters' master skills, they can easily enough houserule a zoomed-in skill list appropriate for their focused campaign.)

I'm going to say that the skill of making the physical components that go into instruments is very likely Machinist rather than Carpenter. There's nothing that says you can't use Machinist skill to shape wooden parts; running a lathe would likely fall under it, for example. And a lot of instruments have metal parts (a clarinet's keys, for example) or are made primarily of metal (a trumpet or saxophone), or have leather parts (most drums); I think in general it's better to use one skill for "shaping special purpose components" than a bunch of skills for working with this material or that material.

But figuring out what those components ought to be seems to be a different basic competence, and one that rests on some level of understanding of pitch, resonant frequencies, absorption of sound waves, and the like. Neither a carpenter/leatherworker/mason/smith nor a machinist would be expected to have any knowledge of that subject. I suppose you could call it Mechanic (Musical Instruments), but I don't think a saxophone or lute is much like the things that are usually classed as "machines."

[Phantasm]

Also, "Musical Instruments" is probably too broad as a specialty, regardless of whether you call the skill Professional Skill, Mechanic, or Wop-Bop-A-Loo-Bop. Crafting a violin and guitar may be similar, but I would not ask a violin-maker to make a trumpet, nor a piano-maker to craft a set of tuned high-toms. Specializing by Instrument Type - Wooden Aerophones, Metal Aerophones, Acoustic Strings, Membranophones, etc. - is the most sane way to go IMO.

[Refplace]

After reading the thread so far my current inclination is.
Engineer (Musical Instrument) to design and spec an instrument. This includes a knowledge of acoustics (even if just anecdotal) and how the components fit together to make desired sounds. Things like materials and size and shape. Few will have or need this though.

Machinist for putting together the various pieces, including preparation. Note the skill lets you build small parts.
Craft skills for making some components, though you just might buy them.

Mechanic (Musical Instruments) (defaults to Machinist and Engineer) to learn how to properly tune and repair instruments. Though tuning should also be covered by the appropriate Musical Instrument skill. But this is for the guy who can tune a piano but not play one well.

After rereading the skills I dont think Carpentry, Leather working or Smith are appropriate here. They could be complimentary skills for building high quality components but they wouldn't teach you how to properly shape and size for the right sound, much less putting different pieces together.

I might also take a hint from skills like Vacc Suit and Riding and say Machinist was capped to your skill in either Engineer or Musical Instrument so you would know how to get the right sound.
I think there should be more of those cap type skills but never got it written up well enough to submit.