Skill for building musical instrument?

[litlfrog]

I'm sure this is somewhere in GURPS Basic, but I'm somehow unable to find it. What skill would be used in GURPS 4e to build a violin, guitar, drum, etc.?

[Sam Baughn]

Engineer (Musical Instrument) to design them and Carpentry and Smith (probably specialising in musical instruments) to build them, I guess. Or you could call it a hobby or professional skill.

[chainsaw7161]

The real-world builder of instruments is called a Luthier, so I would imagine the GURPS skill would be Carpentry(Luthier). I'd probably notch the skill up in difficulty from basic carpentry.

[jspade]

There's no need to notch the skill difficulty up or create a mandatory specialization. I'd treat it as a familiarity of Carpenter or Smith, so an ordinary house-building carpenter or brownsmith would be at a -2 until he got used to doing it; if you really feel it's that difficult, give a penalty to the roll rather than creating an entirely new skill. It also might require specialized tools that not every carpenter or smith has, giving additional penalties unless properly equiped.

[GoodGame]

I believe the type of engineering is called acoustics. For a high level item, or otherwise master-craft, probably some kind of musical and tone sense for original items.

[Fnord-Fnairlane]

For wooden instruments, the base skill is no harder - you're working with standard materials (wood, glue, etc) and standard tools (various types of sharp metal things).

The problem is that the quality of the work must be much higher of you want the resulting instruments to sound any good.

I'm a quite competent amatuer woodworker: a little talent, some training from relatives as a kid, five years of weekly lessons as an adult. Given accurate plans and information on the correct matrials (IE: stuff that someone with the Engineering specialisation could provide) I could manufacture simple woodwind instruments, as could any competent woodworker with the right tools.

However, I wouldn't even attempt to manufacture a string instrument (eg: violin) - it is far too difficult. My teacher, however, had been a professional carpenter and woodworker from his teens to his 60s, doing all sorts of complex custom work for the majority of that period. He could (and did) make violins as a hobby, and apparently they were good, but not great, instruments.

I'd suggest that making a decent violin is at least a -5 penalty to skill, cancelling out an optional specialisation bonus.

[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?

[whswhs]

Professional Skill (Musical Instrument Maker).

In principle, you could fit it into the design/repair/use triad. But for many thousands of years, musical instruments were made with neither the guidance of acoustic theory (or at least not sophisticated acoustic theory that actually had serious predictive value) nor a serious profession of Engineer, just like weapons and clothing and cooking pots and boats. It's really an imposition of game mechanics on reality to insist that there has to be an Engineer skill to design all of those; most of them are traditional designs that each craftsman fiddles with a little bit, and that are made using Smith, Carpenter, Jeweler, or other craft skills or a Professional Skill. GURPS RAW is not meant to be the bed of Procrustes.

I might allow an exception for the design of, say, organs in the ancient and medieval worlds, as those were major construction projects. And certainly twentieth century electronic instruments fall under Engineer (Electronic)/Electronics Repair, though the third skill is Musical Instrument (often one of the Keyboard specialties, but things like the theremin need new specialties).

[Refplace]

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?

its a trap to think there has to be a specific skill for everything.
Carpentry for wood, Smith for metal instruments, Electronics for some modern stuff, Leather working would help for some, etc. I would allow optional specializations and use familiarity penalties. But a Hobby skill for a type of instrument would work too.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Refplace

its a trap to think there has to be a specific skill for everything.
Carpentry for wood, Smith for metal instruments, Electronics for some modern stuff, Leather working would help for some, etc. I would allow optional specializations and use familiarity penalties. But a Hobby skill for a type of instrument would work too.

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.