Yeah, there’s a ton of instruments & vocals that are listed on releases that aren’t exact on MB. That’s why they leave the credited as to the right of the instrument. You can say keyboard [keyboards]. We do that with guitar [lead guitar], [rhythm guitar] or [guitars]. Also, if you know the instrument and it’s more specific select that over what is on the release. In other words for example, Bass. This is used in many liner notes, but if you know it’s an electric bass guitar, you can select that over just the generic, bass. Or electric guitar, when the liner notes only say guitar.
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I personally never say [keyboards], but I can see why some would credit it as it is on the release, which is what that field is for.
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If you ask any musician that plays something like this:
https://www.google.com/search?q=keyboard+rig&tbm=isch
“what instrument do you play?”, he will very likely answer: “keyboards”.
That, together with the fact that it is very common to find this printed on album credits I must say I am surprised to find that this is debated and not available as a selection on MusicBrainz.
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I usually link them to keyboard credited as keyboards (INST-363).
Same for guitars (INST-330) and percussions (STYLE-322).
I almost only see xxxxx on keyboards in printed booklets.
And indeed in concerts, they usually have several stacked keyboards.
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Yeah… me too. I have always had problems working out how to pronounce those square brackets 
If you deal with bands like Ozric Tentacles, Orbital and even Pink Floyd there are large stacks of electronic kit on stage. Many keyboards, samplers and other items all heaped up.
Now the true pedant would want to know which manufacture made this kit - and then we’d be down a technical rabbit hole as complex as the Classical editors have to deal with.
From the MB side I think it is fine to have “keyboard” if to refer to one or more. It is a bit like a drumset which doesn’t actually list which drums are in that set. Sometimes we only have the written details and impossible to know what was really used in that recording session.
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It’s drums because there are multiple drums involved.
That’s why keyboards would also be more appropriate. It (pretty much always) refers to a keyboard rig.
I can’t recall ever having come across an album that mentioned ‘keyboard’ as a credit.
Same as I can’t recall having come across just ‘drum’ as a credit.
If the musician only played one single keyboard, the credits will pretty much always define it to be a piano, a synthesizer, an organ, or whatever.
If an album says ‘keyboards’, which is very common, you can be pretty sure the musician played multiple keyboard instruments.
But since MusicBrainz doesn’t allow ‘keyboards’ and will force you to use ‘keyboard’, that information gets lost.
That is not good.
Every time I see a release in MusicBrainz that says ‘keyboard’, in my mind’s eye I see the musician behind a cheap 100 bucks white plastic Casio keyboard.
That is not good.
Also, MusicBrainz instruments bible says that ‘keyboard’ is always an electronic instrument.
But as we seem to agree, ‘keyboards’ on album credits is often a combination of acoustic and electronic instruments.
So MusicBrainz currently has no way to translate such credits correctly into the database.
(well, not without listening to the recording, looking at photographs, or making a telephone call to the musician)
That is not good, and it’s at least an error/oversight in MusicBrainz’ instruments guidelines.
Well, I think I have been repeating myself. And looking at previous lengthy threads about drums, idiophones, instrument families, this seems to be a very difficult topic.
Maybe it’s the worlds of musicians and theorists colliding here?
(b.t.w. I also came across ‘shakers’ being a percussion instrument.
Maybe we can trade keyboard to keyboards, against shakers to shaker? 
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I was going to suggest that you make a request to have a new “keyboards” instrument added, but unfortunately it’s been proposed before and rejected.
That’s a shame.
Do the people that make these decisions make themselves available on the forum and discuss such things here, or is that all happening somewhere at the ‘back-office’?
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They are all available and, as you can see, the discussions on those tickets that Kid_Devine linked are public and anybody is free to join in, or create another ticket.
I’m sure @CatQuest wouldn’t mind looking at another well thought out and polite ticket - one that doesn’t assume our current massive, complicated and comprehensive instrument tree list not being perfect for everyone right now means people at MB are dumb-dumbs
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That´s exactly my feeling too 
Hail the perfect instrument tree (where there’s no place for messy plurals like keyboards or guitars or drums) a perfect tree which we will not have altered by the reality – nor by the needs of the people wanting to add data as common-sensically credited on (messy!) covers and booklets.
Yes, I’m a bit bitter, because I was the one who asked for “generic, plural “keyboards” credit“ https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/INST-363 in the first place and as a result got the removal of the “guitars” credit instead. And had to accept the absurd replacement of (mostly correct) “drums” credits by a “membranophone” which 80% of the editors had to google first since they never had heard of this term before and certainly never had seen credited it in any booklet they ever had in hands.
But I guess that’s life: sometimes ideology primes over reality – and there’s nothing you can do about it.
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Yeah, that’s a shame. It also seems that the people who are making these decisions don’t much like spending time and interacting on this forum. That doesn’t help either.
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This is one of the best observed posts I have read in ages. 
It needs more plus votes.
Absolutely hit the nail on the head. That clash of RealWorld™ and Academia. We all have such different viewpoints on the world.
I am still quizzing British musicians I meet to see if any of them know what a membranophone is. Not had anyone have a clue what I was talking about. 
But then thy just play the things, not catalogue them.
Not a criticism of the MB leaders. It is just the way language works. 
Everyone has a different viewpoint.
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I think it’s perfectly valid to disagree with the things done but I don’t think it’s correct to accuse MB staff of not interacting with users!
I can think of few organisations where changes to a instrument tree/drums would even be up for discussion at all, as it was in this case. The change was not even a auto-edit.
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Many decisions are made on the IRC channels. Most of what’s said on IRC is recorded and logged, the logs can be viewed (and searched) here. The only discussion I could find relevant to the “keyboards” instrument can be viewed here.
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Hi! I finally have access to community again! I apologise for my absence but it was outside of my control.
Now for the issues debated here I want to be a bit long stretching and generic, you will forgive me doing this only the one time but it’s about time I address some concerns I see in this and other threads about instruments, and quite a bit of reasons why I tend to eschew interacting with these threads in general;
When I ask for tickets I do so not just to reject them, I want it stored there so that I have that ticket, see the “keyboards” ticket? I ask for a better ticket there, that ticket never came.
What helps is thorough and comprehensive done tickets - even something that has been rejected before can, if explained better, be accepted, remember that https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_to_Add_Instruments is a guide, not a hard rule
But also remember that it was written for a reason: these decisions aren’t all done for “academical, stubborn, not-in-touch-with-reality” reasons, they are made so that every one can use the right instruments - remember that your use-case isn’t everyones, remember that for things like composition and lyrics, we use these instead of “writer” when we know better, we correct typoes when we know they are not intentional etc.
That was the reason behind “membranophone” and “guitar family”, NOT to make life harder for everyone, but to fix a really big problem.
I do think about the issues with “I only have x on the liner notes I don’t know what instrument it is further than that!” it’s a problem that plagues me when creating instruments descriptions “how to make especially sure that no-one will misunderstand what this is or use it wrongly?”
It’s a problem that plagues me when I myself use instrument relationships.
This is also why the guideline was put in place, also why the “membranophone” changes were put in an non-auto-edit etc. to try to let everyone in and discuss it, let the community contribute. Only after the fact did people pipe up.
And I have to be honest here. Some of the things said where absolutely not nice, are still not nice.
I get that it’s from frustration, and I sincerely apologise for creating that frustration, but remember: I’m doing this outa my own free time, noone’s paying me, and I’m NOT FINISHED YET (if I ever will be), The “keyboard(s)” is just such one issue - I’m not against making the keyboard instrument we have be more generic, I might not even be against renaming it, but more research needs to be done and I’m only one person.
Further; improvements to MB’s datastructure/relationship-structure may (hopefully) mean that some things will be alleviated still, for example the inclusion of several “not instruments” like microphones, effect-machines et al. the ability to only select logical instruments (ie having “contra-bass” and “electric bass guitar” shown next to bass), tools to mass-change instrument credits (to fix the “membranophone issue”)
If anyone here is a coder, patches are welcome! And if not, well you’re stuck in the same rut as me, because I am not a coder! I do a LOT of research to try to find out The Truth™ about an instrument - sometimes this is more akin to a detective novel than anything else :D and truth, perhaps I’ll “nerd out” about some instrument - make it more academical, but isn’t that what MusicBrainz is all about? We all nerd out about music! (and if you think instruments are bad, you should see labels! :P)
And the coders? Our devs are hard at work doing other, much more pressing things - fixing bugs, converting to react, developing ListenBrainz to bring in hard-needed new customers, and so on.
All I ask of you all is that to remember in your frustration that we are all working here - noone here is trying to make your life harder, especially with adding data, all I ask of you is a little patience. Thank you so much.
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Nicely written. As to “keyboard(s)”, that’s a tough call too. There are many sides to chew on. From a casual user point of view, generic would be the way to go. From the super editor with OCD standpoint, specificity is a must. Lotsa luck. 
Irregardless, glad you’re back.
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I assumed people started setting the credit because they don’t trust that the instrument name isn’t going to change (see membranophone).
(Setting the credit for artist relationships is pretty much always recommended too, is it not?)
So if you are entering a release yourself, and the liner notes say: drums
What do you enter, and are you satisfied with the available options yourself?
And when the liner notes say: keyboards
What do you enter, and are you satisfied with the available options yourself?
You cannot have an instrument name that matches all releases, we can use instrument credits.
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I am still curious…