I have grown up hearing my sister and dad play the musical saw. Since then, when I have told friends about my interest in the instrument, it has been met with disbelief. The saw indeed has a very unusual sound; you would never expect to hear such an unearthly reverberance coming from an appliance generally used to cut wood. But that’s one of the beautiful things about the musical saw, it’s unexpected.
It is interesting to hold something that you know could easily hurt you, and yet, when bent in just the right way and bowed in just the right place, it makes a sound similar to that of a theremin, with a vibrato tone that you could imagine being used in ghostly sci-fi films or haunted houses. It is a sound that, after the initial drag of the bow against its non-serrated edge, hangs suspended.
The saw has an interesting history; it reached the height of its popularity in the 1920s and 30s, mainly for its use in vaudeville. Though historically it was first played using a mallet, the modern way to play the saw is to hold the handle between the knees, serrated blade facing towards the body, and bow it along the non-serrated edge facing outwards. The friction of the bow against the sheet of metal causes it to vibrate, bent and bowed to emulate pitches. Popular Hollywood Actress Marlene Dietrich played the musical saw for WW2 troops as entertainment, making the instrument better known to more people at the time.
Now, as different brands of saws have been manufactured to be made of different metals and different lengths, they also have different sounds. Some may be more musical than others. The length of the saw, as well as its flexibility, may affect its pitch and range. There might be some saws that are easier to play, and some that are difficult to even get a sound out of. And this leads us to an interesting question- who in the first place thought, ‘You know what would be a great instrument? The saw’
And we find an equally mysterious answer, that is, no one really knows. There are several speculations around the origins of the saw. Some theories include it originating in the Appalachian Mountains, where musicians realised they could pull interesting sounds from carpenters’ hand saws, or even more unusual theories of origin, such as that priests and missionaries used their construction saws to create music they could use in liturgies. But these are all just theories. Not one country or person can be credited with the emergence of the saw as a musical instrument. Though it is funny to think that one day a missionary interrupted a construction project to grab someone’s saw and start hitting it with a makeshift mallet, and then the musical saw came to be, I doubt that the transformation of an object to a somewhat widely used musical instrument can be that simple, or specific.
And now, there are many professional saw players out there, musicians such as Natalia Paruz, playing musical saw in movie soundtracks, and commercials, also nicknamed ‘saw lady’ and the organizer of international musical saw festivals in New York City and Israel. And other names, including David Coulter, Mara Carlyle, Mio Higashino, and Charles Hindmarsh, all musicians who have included the saw in some way- if not explicitly- in their musical careers.
So is it really a stretch to believe that the saw can be a musical instrument as well as a useful appliance? After all, isn’t this what we have been doing for so long (especially with percussive instruments), experimenting with different objects to see which ones make the most musical, interesting sounds? So- why not the saw?