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What sort of musical instruments would splicers play/grow/make?
I’m asking mostly for curiosities sake, but it could make a good occ or skill.

it would be interesting to see a bard or troubadour OCC for Splicers. Since most of the history of the Houses is passed down orally, a "Living Historian" OCC would have a station or position in a House, to recount deeds & actions of their House, and also provide bona-fides at the start of meetings & negotiations. Those bound to a House are respected, earning the patronage of the Warlord, while those calling themselves 'freelancers', unbound or banished from a House are viewed with some suspicion. These unbound Living Historians find some measure of comfort with the roaming Technojacker tribes.

Some Living Historians can act as spies & scouts, even using sharp whistle or flute-tones to help co-ordinate different groups during a battle.

Most musical instruments, at least the smaller ones, would be made from bone or wood, grown & sculpted. small flutes & whistles, the occasional jaw-harp or harmonica-like instrument would be easy to carry & conceal.
Small ukulele-like guitars are also easily portable, but less concealable. The strings would be filament-like & grown as part of the instrument itself.
The larger instruments are less portable & require a stable place to maintain them.

iirc, the librarians are able to record memories and act as the historians already.

i do think it would be interesting to see how music would change with completely biological tech

I couldn't think of a different name at the time. It seems most of the appropriate names have already been taken/copyrighted.

Has anyone ever made living bagpipes?

Any new thoughts?

Shark_Force wrote:iirc, the librarians are able to record memories and act as the historians already.

i do think it would be interesting to see how music would change with completely biological tech

Yes, but they are bound to the Brain-Pool of the House (see this: viewtopic.php?f=46&t=149385) & pretty much limited. While a Bard/Troubadour/Talesinger would be more mobile, able to travel between not only different parts of the House, but also other Houses (as stated above) and Technojacker Tribes. They can also act as 'memory-couriers', able to eye-witness accounts such as great battles, weddings, House mergings, ect. A loyal Troubadour would then (if they survived) return to their Librarian & 'upload' the memories to the Librarian. In this way, the Troubadour acts like a living thumb-drive. It isn't that far a stretch to have a Troubadour working often with a Deliveryman (Rifter #32) on sensitive information gathering missions.

to a librarian, pretty much everyone is a living thumb-drive already. they most likely already use scarecrows as remote spy cameras on a regular basis.

a class that could do that sort of thing *without* involving a librarian could be interesting though.

Shark_Force wrote:to a librarian, pretty much everyone is a living thumb-drive already. they most likely already use scarecrows as remote spy cameras on a regular basis.

a class that could do that sort of thing *without* involving a librarian could be interesting though.

Quite true, but a wise Librarian leaves no resource underutilized. A Scarecrow is excellent for espionage & covert information gathering, a Balladeer can go places the Scarecrow can't, or wouldn't be able to; Great Halls, special gatherings, ect.

BookWyrm wrote:

Shark_Force wrote:to a librarian, pretty much everyone is a living thumb-drive already. they most likely already use scarecrows as remote spy cameras on a regular basis.

a class that could do that sort of thing *without* involving a librarian could be interesting though.

Quite true, but a wise Librarian leaves no resource underutilized. A Scarecrow is excellent for espionage & covert information gathering, a Balladeer can go places the Scarecrow can't, or wouldn't be able to; Great Halls, special gatherings, ect.

sure, but you still don't need any special OCC for that, because librarians can use *anyone* as a living thumb-drive. you can have a random person, a senator that the librarian has bribed, an ambitious bodyguard, or whoever (including musicians and other entertainers, of course).

basically anyone who wants something that the librarian could potentially give... and a librarian can potentially give quite a bit. bonus bio-e, information on a hated rival, the use of their scarecrows, a custom-designed piece of bio-tech, wealth, influence, etc.

again, that doesn't mean there isn't potential to have a troubador OCC that can tell stories via memory projection or learn stories by experiencing other people's memories. it just means there is little need for it to directly be a servant of the librarians.

Any music style attacks that the great houses can use against the machine?

I doubt it. The Machine should have access to noise cancelling technology hundreds of times more precise and powerful then ours. In the inverse why hasn't the machine used sound as a weapon?

I guess that violins and other string instruments could be created with a biological base: that's already pretty much what some IRL insects are doing when they're rubbing their hind legs together!

How about a bio-accordion?

abe wrote:How about a bio-accordion?

Accordions make a poor basis for any sort of sonic weapon that could affect Machines or harm other humans.
If you want a simple signaling/musical entertainment device, regular dead material instruments that can be assembled from cast-offs like leather and wood will do just fine and can be much more easily made, discarded and replaced.
Biotech requires that you regularly feed the animal-instrument(from existing foodstocks, special feed, or your own blood), as well as the initial investment in Gene-Pool and Librarian time and energy for a low return on the investment.

Maybe a bio-tuba that could send out a sonic wave to damage the machine, or for lesser damage a bio-bagpipe set?

Tubas fell out of favor with the Houses after a group of Dreadguard became hopelessly encumbered by the instruments they were assigned and were literally shot to pieces by NEXUS.
And one thing the varied personalities of NEXUS agree on; anybody caught playing bagpipes is killed with extreme prejudice. Just because.

For religious purposes:bio-organs(the musical kind)!

abe wrote:For religious purposes:bio-organs(the musical kind)!

Though Splicers has a sort of bio-Gothic horror atmosphere going on, logistics and wartime economies preclude wasting valuable war-material on strictly ceremonial equipment. Bio-organs(as you picture them) would be too limited in purpose and too large and unwieldy for battlefield use, and as fixed installations, they'd be either quickly overrun or would represent a a last-resort defense in a House warren, only useful when the enemy is IN YOUR HOUSE, knocking down your walls and killing the humans in the place.

It's easier to come at the problem from the other side; the use of sonic bio weaponry for ceremonial use can be said to be already taken care of, as I'm sure Houses use their sonic weaponry, at lower registers, to communicate and celebrate. And warmount-integrated sonic weaponry would serve the purpose of organs and other wind instruments quite ably without creating an immobile installation that serves a limited purpose and still has to be fed from limited resources.

Has anyone ever made a bio-thumb piano?
Granted it’s usually made of metal, but theoretically it could possibly be made of other materials.

While I have no doubt that post-metal-plague humanity has developed a good number of nonmetallic substitutes for metal instruments and tools, including thumb pianos(which I could see as something traveling bard might like to carry), I strongly doubt that anybody would bother making a bio-version of one. Biotech is resoutce-expensive, more often than not requires require feeding/maintenance, and is survival-focused. A living thumb-piano offers no advantages(pianos, and especially ones of such small size, are poor choices as the basis of weaponry or special tools) over ones constructed of materials like wood, sinew, shell, and ceramic, and I do not see a cost-conscious House wasting resources on developing them.