Musical Instruments by TL?

[jason taylor]

Arguably any device capable of converting electronic transmissions into auditory form is a musical instrument. Which includes your cell phone or tablet.

[The Colonel]

As for high tech instruments ... what was that horrible thing in Bank's The Hydrogen Sonata again?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

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

Are these devices that you hold and play, rather than devices that you sit at? If so, I think there is a skill of "small keyboard" (originally intended for the accordion and concertina) that might apply.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

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?

If I had to guess, I would say that the scratching part falls under Musical Instrument (Scraper), which falls under Idiophones; the electronic amplification isn't significant, but I'm not so sure about the use of a turntable. Actually playing the recorded sound is just Electronics Operation (Media), of course.

Do drum sets include tuned as well as untuned drums? The existing system has the rule that all untuned membranophones and idiophones are IQ/A skills, and that a percussionist can take Musical Instrument (Rhythm Instruments) as a single combined IQ/H skill covering all of them, from triangles and finger cymbals to bass drums and gongs. But tuned drums are a separate IQ/H skill. This is sort of a borderline case, as it seems odd to say that having a tuned drum in a drum set means you need two different skills to play the set.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Are these devices that you hold and play, rather than devices that you sit at? If so, I think there is a skill of "small keyboard" (originally intended for the accordion and concertina) that might apply.

Hm, of the stuff invented after Low Tech, keyed woodwinds, calliopes and pyrophones, drum sets, and many later synthesizers seem similar enough to the way the low TL instruments are manipulated to use the same skills.

For stuff that might need new skills, yeah the valved horns (I use Chromatic Trumpet as the representative instrument name for that family), the key operated free reeds (Accordion), and friction ideophones (Glass Harmonica) seem like they might. Multipiped free reeds (Harmonica) is another arguable case, though there do seem to be low TL analogs like the khaen, it's just missing from LTC3, though I suppose it could be lumped into Panpipe if somebody insisted.

After the adoption of digital synthesis and standard musical description languages (ca the mid 1980s) there's no longer any necessary link between the user interface (the "music controller") and how it works or what it sounds like, so theoretically you can design something to use the same skills as any traditional instrument and sound like anything you wanted. Most of them tend to keyboards or slide like interface akin to the glass harmonica, but you could presumably set them up any way you wanted, and of course develop totally unique interfaces too, though so far that hasn't really happened much. There is a transitional period where there do seem to be some different electronic instruments developing though - Theramin, Modular Synth and MIDI as specialties perhaps.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

After the adoption of digital synthesis and standard musical description languages (ca the mid 1980s) there's no longer any necessary link between the user interface (the "music controller") and how it works or what it sounds like, so theoretically you can design something to use the same skills as any traditional instrument and sound like anything you wanted. Most of them tend to keyboards or slide like interface akin to the glass harmonica, but you could presumably set them up any way you wanted, and of course develop totally unique interfaces too, though so far that hasn't really happened much. There is a transitional period where there do seem to be some different electronic instruments developing though - Theramin, Modular Synth and MIDI as specialties perhaps.

Onde Martenot, trautonium, and other analog electronic instruments seem to call for their own skills. I think I might distinguish between the ones where you wave your hands in the air and the ones where you move a slider along a conductive element. I'm not sure what would be good names for them; I mostly chose prototypical instruments to name skills after, in parallel to the way "sword" is used for the gladius, the katana, the khopesh, and so on, so maybe "Theremin" for the capacitance-based ones.

Anything with a keyboard probably falls under one or another Keyboard skill, though you probably would roll vs. Electronics Operation (Media) to adjust the sound output. I probably would still say that for digitally controlled systems as well; we don't have a different skill for, say, an oscilloscope with a digital interface.

[Phantasm]

The drum sets I'm familiar with have at minimum: 1 bass drum (untuned drum), 1 snare (untuned drum), 2 small tom-toms (tuned drum), 1 large floor tom (tuned drum), 2 standing cymbals (untuned percussion), and 1 set closed cymbals (untuned percussion); professional drummers often add a second bass (untuned drum) and a series of 3 to 12 differently-tuned toms (tuned percussion), and sometimes a large gong (untuned percussion). That's not counting specialty percussion like a set of tuned wooden blocks (tuned percussion), maracas (shakers), and other fun stuff they add for a single piece.

The bass drums and closed cymbals use foot pedals as well as or instead of drumsticks, but that could just be a familiarity penalty.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

The drum sets I'm familiar with have at minimum: 1 bass drum (untuned drum), 1 snare (untuned drum), 2 small tom-toms (tuned drum), 1 large floor tom (tuned drum), 2 standing cymbals (untuned percussion), and 1 set closed cymbals (untuned percussion); professional drummers often add a second bass (untuned drum) and a series of 3 to 12 differently-tuned toms (tuned percussion), and sometimes a large gong (untuned percussion). That's not counting specialty percussion like a set of tuned wooden blocks (tuned percussion), maracas (shakers), and other fun stuff they add for a single piece.

Needs more cowbell.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Needs more cowbell.

Heheheh. I count that under "other fun stuff ... for a single piece". Almost any percussion instrument falls under that heading.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

The drum sets I'm familiar with have at minimum: 1 bass drum (untuned drum), 1 snare (untuned drum), 2 small tom-toms (tuned drum), 1 large floor tom (tuned drum), 2 standing cymbals (untuned percussion), and 1 set closed cymbals (untuned percussion); professional drummers often add a second bass (untuned drum) and a series of 3 to 12 differently-tuned toms (tuned percussion), and sometimes a large gong (untuned percussion). That's not counting specialty percussion like a set of tuned wooden blocks (tuned percussion), maracas (shakers), and other fun stuff they add for a single piece.

The bass drums and closed cymbals use foot pedals as well as or instead of drumsticks, but that could just be a familiarity penalty.

Just the other day, C and I walked by a local church where someone had set up a drum set on the grass outside. It had five drums (one was definitely a floor mounted bass) and one cymbal (standing). C said that it was clearly not a professional set.