The story of the history of musical instruments is the story of the quest for low notes. (Have you ever seen a theorbo?)

The ancient Egyptians realized that the longer a string was, the lower was the note it produced. They built the pyramids to serve as the anchoring points for long, long strings, the other ends of which would be fastened to an obelisk. Millions had been spent on the scheme when someone, probably a teen-age girl, discovered that you could get low notes more simply by making the strings thicker.

To cover the government's embarrassment over the expenditures, the pyramids were deemed works of art, and they have remained such to this day.