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Craft and related trades workers · code 7312

Musical instrument makers and tuners

An app can tell you the note is flat. Voicing an organ pipe takes a trained ear.

AI barely touches any of the eleven tasks, from playing instruments to check the sound to tuning strings, aligning keys and fitting drumheads.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

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

  • 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.

86 / 100

Strongly holds up against AI

Most of this job still needs an actual human. AI would mostly be making the tea.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

59 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 11 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 14 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 14 = 86.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Pinch of salt: this number is probably too rosy

It only asks what AI software could do, and this job is 59 out of 100 hands-on. A chatbot can't do that part. A robot might, one day, and nobody measures how close that is.

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Musical instrument makers and tuners 86

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Tuning with electronic analysers.
  • Designs and measurements in CAD.
  • Bookings and repair records.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Judging tone by ear.
  • Fine adjustment and repair by hand.
  • Building instruments to suit a player.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Digital measurement and 3D-printed parts.
  • Repairing digital and hybrid instruments.
  • Restoring historic instruments.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

21 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 63 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

59 how hands-on

A fair part of this job is hands-on, so robots would be needed for that part, not just software.

So could a robot do the physical part?

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.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 47 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

59 How
hands-on
47 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, fiddly work in tight spaces

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs .

finger skill 53.6 · hand skill 49.2 · cramped spaces 37.3 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · fiddly 39.4+

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 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 16, against an average of 14. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 16

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

    Very Low
  2. 16

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

    Very Low
  3. 15

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

    Very Low
  4. 15

    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
  5. 15

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

    Very Low
  6. 14

    Assembling and installing new pipe organs and pianos in buildings.

    Very Low
  7. 14

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

    Very Low
  8. 14

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

    Very Low
  9. 14

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

    Very Low
  10. 12

    Aligning pads and keys on reed or wind instruments

    Very Low
  11. 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 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
63
AI does it for you
21

Sidekick wins, by 42 points.

How good a match is this?

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

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 3995

So, should instrument makers and tuners be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. Every task rates Very Low, from tuning to building and repairing instruments. Tuning apps help, but making and adjusting instruments is ear, hand and years of practice.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” family, averaging 83. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →