Musical Instruments and Pencil Casings from Wood By Teodorico Magda Musical Instruments
and Pencil Casings From Wood
By Teodorico Magda teodoricomagda@yahoo.com
Wood has an infinite number of uses, two of which deserve our special attention: as a casing for pencils and as a component in the manufacture of musical
instruments. The search for the right kinds of wood that could suit in the making of musical instrument and pencil is on. Forest researchers are testing several wood species for this purpose. This field of endeavor is not very new in a country like the Philippines. Here, ancestors made simple wooden musical instruments such as the kudyapi. They used bamboo to make nose flutes,
guitars, zithers, buzzers, and gongs, harps, and organs. A famous and enduring example is the bamboo organ in Las Piñas, which Father Diego de la Cora built in the 1800s with the aid of many Filipino artisans.