Craft and related trades workers · code 7312

Musical instrument makers and tuners

Musical instrument makers and tuners make, assemble, repair, adjust and restore musical instruments and tune them to the required pitch with hand or power tools. They usually specialize in one type of instrument, such as stringed instruments, brass instruments, reed instruments, pianos or percussion instruments. Tasks include - (a) fabricating and assembling musical instruments and instrument parts of wood, ebonite, metal, leather and other materials; (b) repairing or replacing musical instrument parts and components such as strings, bridges, felts and keys, using hand and power tools; (c) playing and inspecting instruments to evaluate their sound quality and to locate any defects; (d) adjusting string tensions to achieve proper tone or pitch of stringed instruments; (e) adjusting lips, reeds, or toe holes of organ pipes, using hand tools, to regulate airflow and loudness of sound; (f) tuning and servicing pipe organs by adjusting pitch of organ A pipes to conform with pitch of the tuning fork and adjusting pitch of other pipes with reference to pitch of tuned pipes; (g) installing new drumheads in percussion instruments; (h) tuning accordions by aurally comparing pitch of reeds with master reeds and filing reeds to obtain standard pitch; (i) aligning pads and keys on reed or wind instruments; (j) tuning percussion instruments to required pitch by tightening or loosening cords holding leather pieces fixed atop or at both ends of the instrument; (k) assembling and installing new pipe organs and pianos in buildings. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Brass instrument repairer - Piano tuner - Stringed instrument maker - Woodwind instrument maker

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 59 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

keyboard musical instrument maker
idiophone musical instruments maker
membranophone musical instruments maker
musical instrument technician
instrument technician
wind musical instrument maker
stringed musical instrument maker

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 14 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 14 = 86

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

58.6

How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

46.7

How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 53.6 · hand skill 49.2 · cramped spaces 37.3 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly 39.4+ Hands-on, fiddly work in tight spaces

More fine handwork, and more time in cramped or awkward spots, than a typical hands-on job. That is exactly what machines find hardest: they do best in tidy, predictable places.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 58.6 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 15.5, while the average is 14. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

15.5
Playing and inspecting instruments to evaluate their sound quality and to locate any defects

Very Low
15.5
Adjusting string tensions to achieve proper tone or pitch of stringed instruments

Very Low
14.8
Adjusting lips, reeds or toe hole of organ pipes, using hand tools, to regulate airflow and loudness of sound

Very Low
14.8
Tuning and servicing pipe organs by adjusting pitch of organ A pipes to conform with pitch of tuning fork and adjusting pitch of other pipes with reference to pitch of tuned pipes

Very Low
14.8
Tuning percussion instruments to required pitch by tightening or loosening cords holding leather pieces fixed atop or at both ends of instrument

Very Low
14.5
Assembling and installing new pipe organs and pianos in buildings.

Very Low
14.3
Fabricating and assembling musical instruments and instrument parts of wood, ebonite, metal, leather and other materials

Very Low
14.3
Tuning accordions by aurally comparing pitch of reeds with master reeds and filing reeds to obtain standard pitch

Very Low
13.9
Repairing or replacing musical instrument parts and components, such as strings, bridges, felts and keys, using hand and power tools

Very Low
12.3
Aligning pads and keys on reed or wind instruments

Very Low
10
Installing new drumheads in percussion instruments

Very Low

11 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

AI helps you: 63
AI does it for you: 21

Helping wins by 42 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3995

Compared with similar jobs

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” group, averaging 83.4. This one is above that.