Sarah Angliss » Play the saw in six weeks

Play the saw in six weeks

playing the saw

Here’s a brief tutorial on the musical saw, a European skiffle instrument with a haunting, almost voice-like sound:

1) Any old saw?
2) How to make the saw sing
3) Developing your ear

Ethereal skiffle

The sound of the saw is so unexpectedly beautiful, some listeners find it hard to believe where it’s coming from. Played well, the saw really does sing. Its brilliant, ethereal sound is rather like the sound of a human voice. Saw players stroke the edge of the saw with a cello or bass bow (sometimes home-made) to make it vibrate. Occasionally they percuss it with a soft beater. They bend the instrument to swoop from one pitch to another, giving the instrument its characteristic portamento sound.

The musical saw is a wonderful ’skiffle instrument’ – a cheap, everyday object that has been appropriated by musicians who have no money to buy classical instruments. I’ve encountered players of this traditional European instrument in Britain, Holland and the USA.

I have been playing the saw for around twenty years. As a kid, I was taught the rudiments of the instrument by musician Bunny Nunn. He gave me a lesson in exchange for the saw in our garage (which I later found out was a rather good one). Over the last few years, I’ve been incorporating it into some of my live shows. It’s been seen in Richard Wiseman and Simon Singh’s Theatre of Science and in various shows for the Brighton Festival Fringe. I’ve also tutored some fellow musicians to play the saw, including the instrumentalists from Stomp. This company used an ensemble of saws in The Lost and Found Orchestra, a show which premiered to at the Brighton Festival 2006, reappearing at the South Bank Centre, January 2009.

If you’re interested in learning the saw, the following pages should help you to get started:

Examples of saw playing

You can see and hear some examples of my saw playing in the Reverb Jam on this site. I’ll try to post some more examples over the next few weeks.

An example of saw playing that’s easy to come by is in the film ‘Delicatessen’. One of the central characters plays the saw beautifully on his roof. Occasionally, I’ve heard what I think is percussive saw playing on recordings by the chanteuse Edith Piaf.

I’ve heard that saw playing is still quite common in Holland, for instance in bars in Amsterdam. My grandfather Emlyn was a saw player – sadly he died many years before I was born.