Musical Instruments by TL?

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by scc

I think wine barrels might have been used as the unit of measure/account because they where the preferred way to move things as the alternative was break-bulk (lots of little boxes) a man can roll more goods in a wine barrel then he can carry in his hands.

I don't know any sources for =large= barrels being used as 'shipping containers' for miscellaneous dry goods, but I am not a specialist. In the sources I read, medieval shippers preferred bales and chests for miscellaneous packing.

Anyways, the point is that say 14th century England was importing large amounts of wine from Gascony, I would expect that anywhere which regularly served guests with money had kinds on offer, just like there were grades of ale and every brewer had her favourite recipe and seasoning.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

From what I’ve read, in a pop/rock recording session, they basically function as the producer’s technical support. The producer says “I want some deep reverb on the guitar there, and a softer tone to the drums”, and the engineer figures out how to make that happen and make it good.

At least at TL7/early TL8, there's also a lot of very fiddly stuff with setting up amp levels for various instruments, getting the acoustics in the studio right by moving amps and microphones around, and similar tasks.

There's also a fair bit of post-production work to blend tracks recorded by different players, clean up mistakes, alter sound levels for given instruments, etc.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

When did professional cooking and mixed drinks become common?

TL1 for professional cooking (as in, cooking for large groups, and preparing fancy dishes for the nobs). By TL2, professional cooking was very well developed (e.g., there's a famous Roman cookbook by Apicius).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius

Additionally, many people didn't have the equipment to cook certain foods, so they might buy it from a professional cook or take ingredients to the cook for him to prepare (professional cooks tended to be male). This was particularly true for lower class Romans, as well as some medieval European town-dwellers.

As for "mixed drinks," it depends on what you mean by "mixed." Distilling is late TL2, established by TL3, and industrialized by TL4, but the idea of adding stuff to an alcoholic drink to make it taste better probably dates to the time when the first Paleolithic hunter decided that adding a bit of unfermented honey to the fermented honey water made it taste better.

The ancient Greeks would add all sorts of stuff to their wine, arguably making them into "wine cocktails.

http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/uncorkin...ent-cocktails/

By TL3, you had all sorts of mixed alcoholic drinks, mostly based on mead, wine, or beer. (e.g., possets, caudles, flips).

Cordials (i.e., distilled spirits with sugar and other stuff added to them) are straight TL3. Originally, they were used medicinally, hence the origin of things like bitters.

True clear "cocktails" consisting of a blend of distilled spirits + cordials, are probably late medieval (certainly TL3 if you count fortified wines or ciders), but are more likely to be TL4.

So, if you want your medieval fantasy troll character to have "water and sulfuric acid on the rocks" (where the rocks are granite), the concept isn't that anachronistic.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I don't know any sources for =large= barrels being used as 'shipping containers' for miscellaneous dry goods, but I am not a specialist. In the sources I read, medieval shippers preferred bales and chests for miscellaneous packing.

Maybe not medieval, but by the 17th c. shippers liked barrels. They were tough, relatively water- and vermin-proof, and, in some cases you could disassemble the empty barrel to free up space.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

TL1 for professional cooking (as in, cooking for large groups, and preparing fancy dishes for the nobs). By TL2, professional cooking was very well developed (e.g., there's a famous Roman cookbook by Apicius).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius

Additionally, many people didn't have the equipment to cook certain foods, so they might buy it from a professional cook or take ingredients to the cook for him to prepare (professional cooks tended to be male). This was particularly true for lower class Romans, as well as some medieval European town-dwellers.

That is a very good point! Today in the rich world, a functional tool to accomplish any kitchen task is available for a nominal price, but historically many people did not have a bakeoven, a frame to hang up pasta, a mincing knife ... or just had not mastered burying kimchee so it fermented nicely. Where we go to stores and buy finished foods, a lot of things involve going to a neighbour or a stall on the corner and ordering them.

[Varyon]

Dazer reported as necrospammer

[RGTraynor]

Aww. Interesting thread, necro'ed or otherwise.

One followup I'd recommend is one of my standbys for creating dense cultural detail for unfamiliar areas: going to Wikipedia and typing in "Music of X." (Music, Culture, Cuisine, etc.)

For instance, a crash program to develop a cultural package for a hitherto-unvisited region of my gameworld had me try "Music of Indonesia." That's when I ran into "gamelan" music (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamelan), a traditional form that involves an ensemble of gongs, various metallophones, fiddles and flutes. Fascinating stuff, and you can pop over to YouTube to see and hear examples in action.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Aww. Interesting thread, necro'ed or otherwise.

One followup I'd recommend is one of my standbys for creating dense cultural detail for unfamiliar areas: going to Wikipedia and typing in "Music of X." (Music, Culture, Cuisine, etc.)

I recommend a look at the concept of "cantometrics," proposed by the folk music specialist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. Lomax came up with a couple of dozen features that could be used to characterize a particular culture's music, and several suggestions about how those features could be correlated with social and cultural traits. Rather speculative, but a potential source of inspiration for inventing fantasy cultures.

[Pursuivant]

FWIW, I'd definitely allow Expert Skill (Musicology), which covers the sort of (musical) topics discussed in this thread.