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Now I know there are MORE than enough discussions on "this would be the best theme song for army x" or "I play this whenever I win a fight with unit z" but I'm kinda curious as to how music is viewed in the Imperial Guard in-universe. I've read an admittedly rather meager amount of IG novels, mainly Ciaphas Cain and a bit of Gaunt's Ghosts but if there was ever a musician in battle I missed it.

Think about it; throughout history, musicians have always been an integral part of any army. From the horns of Joshua's battle at Jericho to the highland bagpipers or the fantastic drum and fife duets of the Revolutionary War and Civil War, soldiers were often trained to shoot enemy musicians ON SIGHT to cause communication breakdown. I myself am an avid percussionist and while I play kit, battery, and axillary, my favorite style to play barring jazz is military snare partially because it's a great form of communication when the corp is spread out on the field. Music aids in communication and inspires morale while often presenting a fearsome image to the enemy (though in this universe I think the only musicians anyone is afraid of would be Noise Marines). Plus, most would admit that the most badass soldier in the army is probably the guy who forgoes carrying a primary weapon to carry an instrument for the sake of stirring the troops. Even today there are accounts (if not exaggerated) of soldiers strapping boomboxes to themselves or cranking up the vehicle's radio to blast something hardcore (or in the case of "Generation Kill," some Avril Lavigne).

Point is, I'm just curious if anyone's heard of musicians in the Imperial Guard in general. I'd figure the Mordians to be the most likely, but anyone else? I personally am considering looking for some non-IG models to take instruments off of and put them on less important IG models in my army, for kicks if nothing else. Perhaps a bagpipe-toting member of the company command squad in place of a vox-caster model or standard carrier.

Yeah, I'd always imagined it in the place of a standard.

Anyways, music on the field died off for three very good reasons. The first was advances in communications and logistics. Once you started seeing messenger cavalry and the telegraph, you could just give out clear, concise orders, rather than vague commands.

The second was the rise of well-trained NCOs and low-level officers that were encouraged to use their own initiative. With untrained masses of musketmen, all you could really rely on was to get your troops to volley fire and move in columns. Once you start getting actually well-trained soldiers, they can figure things out on their own and don't have to wait for centralised commands to come down to them before they make any moves.

Thirdly, you have changes at the campaign level that made a difference. Once you started getting huge armies moving over huge tracks of land at high speed, strategy had to change. Non longer were you marching armies with vague understanding of where your opponent was, or fighting single, huge, pitched battles with your entire army one at a time. As such, keeping your army in tact, in formation, doing the exact things you want it to be doing at the exact time isn't really all that important, thus a much decreased need to get exact orders out in real time, if a single battle, and thus the whole war, was no longer at stake.

While perhaps you could see some lapse in quality of soldier in the 41st millenium, the other two are certainly true in a world of voxes and microbeads, and where a battle is really just an endless meatgrinder where you win by pure attrition and application of ordnance.

I can't say much about book fluff (having not really read any), but it doesn't make much sense to have musical instruments for much more than morale.

... and the rule of cool.

I'm pretty sure there were IG musicians in Rogue Trader; I know there were Squat and Eldar ones. Standard bearer replacements definitely sound best to me, but I guess you could fudge them into platoon commanders too, to represent their historical uses on the battlefield. I think bagpipes on models using Victoria Lamb's kilt conversion kits would be aces

Well, in the new Gaunt's Ghosts' book, Salvation's Reach, they

Milo.

Joey wrote:Milo.

Until he ran off with Saint Sabbat

but it doesn't make much sense to have musical instruments for much more than morale

I agree, the whole comm-bead and vox caster communications system is much more reliable and yes, music for communication is fairly vague. I just figured it'd probably work fine in place of those for the heck of it since vox-casters simply give a re-roll (I believe) to issuing orders, which can only be issued to a single unit no more than 6 (or 12?) inches away which by all means isn't very far, well within hearing range of any sort of instrument of war. Standard bearers, to me, do make more sense though, I agree. Who wouldn't love to march in to battle to "The Treads On the Land Raider Crush the Heretics?"

... and the rule of cool.

Now I'm thinking of going back to my Fantasy Dwarf army and giving a Dwarf Slayer a new axe to play with. That orange Mohawk would go nice with a Gibson SG.

Worth remembering that by the Napoleonics the main job of musicians was to act as stretcher-bearers once on the battlefield and the killing had started. Music has always been a part of the military pomp, a staple of parades - hence why the British Army still retains various military bands, such as the Massed Bands of the Grenadier Guards.

For the Imperial Guard I can't see this being any different and I would like to think that they have musicians for the parades and so on, but once they're on the battlefield the musicians stow away their instruments, pick up their lasguns or stretchers and perform a secondary role.
However I do like to think that Mordians go into battle with drums and fifes playing.