Category: Musical Saws

The 40th Annual Saw Festival in California!

Announcing the 40th Annual Saw Festival
August 12-13, 2017, in Santa Cruz and Felton, California.

Schedule:

August 12, 2017
2:00 pm Open jam at the Scribner Statue
1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA
6:30 pm Potluck and jam
Roaring Camp outer parking lot in Felton, CA.

August 13, 2017
10:00 am – 5:00 pm 40th Annual Saw Festival
Roaring Camp in Felton, CA.

11:00 am Musical Saw Contest on the Main Stage.
The 40th annual Saw Contest, the longest running saw contest in the world, will crown our 2017 champion.

At the festival you can jam, meet other saw players, take part in the contest, take a workshop, and hear some great saw players.

If you are planning to attend, please send an email to sawplayers@yahoo.com. Also, please let us know if you are interested in performing on the main stage either as a soloist or with your group.

We hope to see you there!

Kenny Blacklock
Secretary-Treasurer, IMSA

Copyright © 2017 International Musical Saw Association, All rights reserved.

Sad to report that David Weiss passed away a few days ago.

Tribute to David Weiss

David was a strong force in promoting the Musical Saw and a great musician. He created a great Musical Saw CD “Virtuoso Saw” (available on CDBaby) and well worth it to add to your musical library!

RIP David – We’ll miss you

Janeen Rae Heller posted an interesting question on FaceBook recently:
Does anyone know how to amplify or use a microphone on a saw while playing with a loud electric band- with out getting feedback from the other instruments through the saw microphone? Any help would be appreciated. Also, any ideas on how to hear your self play in a band with loud instruments?

Some of the answers:

The trouble with contact mics is that a saw has no hollow body to resonate sound. I like to think of the saw as a one string bell. You can’t attach a mic to the metal it dampens it. The peak of the vibration moves dynamically up and down the blade while you play as well which means a large area that needs to be covered.
Your best bet is a great sound engineer when you play on stage. If i can I always try to take a moment and talk to him about some of the difficulties of getting sound out of a saw, placement of the monitors and where is the best place on the stage. Dropping some of the higher Freq so the rasp of the bow is less piercing as well as to play a little with the re-verb. Being in a band that gets loud and often plays in bars with stages that are not up to the Majesty and Sophistication of the Saw, I keep back up instruments to play. -Byron Owens

You can buy a magnetic pickup (humbucker, NOT single-coil) for $5-$200+ & affix it to the handle more-or-less elaborately…I’ve been doing this since 2000- piezo pickups sound like #### on a saw…hope this helps…. – George Hiller

Here is a YouTube shoot of Tony Licata playing his Musical Saw:

Check out his interesting cheat (Saw handle)