"I don't know how much fidelity's necessary. You could make an automaton that played a normal musical instrument, though, or a hurdy-gurdy -" He sends a mental image of a hurdy-gurdy. "If it was a short song or the object could reasonably be stationary furniture."
"Well, the hurdy-gurdy might be a dead end, then, they're kind of tinny, but an automaton should be able to play a keyboard just fine - more annoying programming project than spinning a drum but it should work."
"Never made one, but without looking it up what I can remember is they need the high-grade memory handling and a definition of whatever math you want them to do etched in as a trigger-action pattern and then you can ask them problems and they'll give you the answer."
"...Yeah, a ways in, kids have lots of energy and around my age is about as good as it gets and when I'm thirty in my years I'll probably still be pretty quick in the brain but less physically energetic and it's downhill from there. We don't just suddenly die when our creche dates are too long ago, we wear out."
So a lot of people who look vaguely like mixes of Fëanáro and Nerdanel gather around the table and ask each other technical questions, quite competitively. He meets the Ambarussa, both of whom look to be about the age of humans of 10. Macalaurë gets bored of the conversation and starts singing and everyone switches to osanwë. The baby is passed around and doted on.
(Singing the grace song all the way. So useful. Kib is pretty sure it works when he does it at least well enough that he can, like, walk.)