Cebu: Guitar capital of the Philippines | Bangkok Post: learning

About music

Cebu is the city in the Philippines famous for producing guitars.

Lapu Lapu Island (Mactan Island) is the part of Cebu most famous for its guitars. The photo above was taken at Alegre guitar factory (Take two guided tours of the store in YouTube: #1 and #2).

Cebu also has an annual guitar festival (Watch in YouTube for one nice piece see this number).

Also read a recent Bangkok Post article that gives you a guided tour of Cebu (See article).

Click button to listen to Cebu Guitars and rightclick to download

FACES & PLACES: The guitar man by Peerawat Jariyasombat

Jose P. Hiyas, a salesman at Alegre, a guitar factory on Mactan Island in the Philippines, seemed happy showing me how nice this instrument is. He has quite a nice job, I think.

Mactan is famed for its handmade guitars. A number of factories scattered around the island produce quality guitars whose prices can range from a few thousand pesos to more than 30,000 (20,900 baht) for high-end ones.

Unlike factories churning out guitars on mass scale, the Alegre set-up seems an easy workplace operating at a less hectic pace. Wood used in making the instrument is carefully selected, and it takes up to a month to produce a single guitar.

Hiyas has big hands, but he wields them subtly when playing the instrument. And no matter which instrument he chose from the inventory, the net result was always the same - the music flowed beautifully. The sound was so good that, for a while, I was misled into believing he was strumming an expensive guitar, even though it was a cheaper model.

Perhaps, the sound effect had more to with the player than the instrument.

(Source: Bangkok Post, FACES & PLACES, The guitar man, 11/04/2011, Peerawat Jariyasombat, link) 

instrument - musical instrument, a device for making music such as a piano, guitar, flute, drums, etc (See Wikipedia)
guitar - the popular stringed instrument most commonly used in rock bands (See Wikipedia)
scattered - spread over a large area กระจัดกระจาย
range from X to Y - values from X to Y can be found
high-end - high quality, expensive

churning out - producing large amounts quickly 
mass - large numbers จำนวนมหาศาล
scale - size (relative size)

set-up - organization, the way that a group of things or people are organized
workplace - the place where a person works (an office, workshop or factory floor, for example)
hectic - very busy and fast วุ่นวาย
pace - the speed at which something happens, the speed and rhythm of something (See glossary) ท่างทำนอง ย่างก้าว จังหวะ ที่สิ่งต่างๆ ดำเนินไป

wield - use (move them around and do things with them)
subtle (adjective) - 1. not obvious and therefore difficult to see or notice; 2. complicated in an attractive sort of way
subtly (adverb)
no matter which - any (applies to all, is true for every one)
net result - when two forces or factors that work in the opposite direction are at work, the end result of both of them (somewhere in the middle from what either would produce alone)
mislead (present tense) - when a person is made to believe something that is not true
misled (past tense)  
strum - moving the fingers quickly across the strings of a musical instrument such as the guitar
inventory - the products kept in a shop, warehouse, goods that a company has bought and stores for future use or sale สินค้าที่จัดเก็บในสต๊อก (See Wikipedia)

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