Conduits of Sound

My friend plays the cello. Once a year, he has to change the strings, and it costs him over $300. From what he tells me, most serious cello players buy different strings from different companies. Apparently some companies make some strings better than others. If you want the best sound, you can't just buy a full set from one place.

Musical instruments are a wonder. When you really get down to it, everything in the universe is made up of the same basic materials, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything like a tuba in nature. How do we come up with this stuff? Strings and pipes and skins and metals all meticulously engineered to produce such precise noises. When I was in Milan, I saw a museum filled with old instruments, many of them primitive by today's standards. I never could have come up with them, though.