Playing the Musical Saw can be painful, particularly if you stay at it for hours at a time. The key stress areas are: thumb and finger (unless you use a cheat), your left arm, and your thighs. Even your bow arm can get tired after awhile. We contort our bodies in an asymmetrical way to play the saw, resulting in muscle imbalances. You could end up twisting your torso to such an extant as to distort your neck and compress vertebra as well. A big culprit is repetitive motion injury (both hands) as well as carpal tunnel issues to the saw hand (a cheat will really help alleviate this)We risk injury from repetitive motion and we tend to build tension in our necks, arms and hands with extended practice.
In latter articles, I’ll talk about exercises, however, here are two important things you can do:
Warm up (as noted previously, this is something I’ll discuss later on) At this point, you can make up your own exercises – just keep in mind, the goal is to loosen up your muscles and joints so they will come under lesser stress whilst playing.
Number two: Take a break every 20 minutes or so and don’t just sit and relax, the purpose of the break is to once again, stretch out and relax muscles and joints.
We’ll come back to this topic sometime in the future. – In the meantime, play well!
Cleaning the saw should be done with just a cloth. If it is important to you to remove rosin buildup (this is just cosmetic – it wont impact the musicality of your saw) – use either soap and hot water or possibly alcohol.
If you need to scrub, do NOT use anything metalic (ie. wire brush, SOS, etc.). If you do, then mcroscopic particles of your scrubbing agent can embed into your saw and the two different metals in contact with each other can cause galvanic corrosion.
But make sure the saw is absolutely dry after washing.
If you are putting the saw away for a long time, you can protect it from rust by givning it a light coating of light oil (I use WD-40) – BUT REMEMBER TO ALWAYS WIPE OFF ALL OIL COMPLETELY BEFORE YOU PLAY – OIL WILL KILL YOU BOW!!!
If you want to really go crazy…. In nautical engineering, there is an item called a sacrificial anode. This is a peice of easily corrodable metal (typically, zinc) that you attach to the metal you want to protect. So a peice of zinc attached to a bronze condenser head will corrode quickly and by doing so will protect the condenser head. I dont want to go into details but suffice it to say, it works. You can do the same thing to protect your saw. Post US 1982 pennies are composed of zinc sandwiched between copper. To expose the zinc, stack up pennies on your drill press and bore a hole down the center. Next, get some copper wire and pass it through the holes and then wrap the wire around your saw.
Drawbacks:
A lot of effort to go through when it might be easier just to deal with the rust when it appears on your saw.
Possibly illegal – recently a law went into effect protecting pennies and nickles from mis-use (due to the fact that the mineral content is more valuable than the monetary value of these two coins)
The exercise is purely hypothetical – Ive never really tried it – but it should work!
Now, what to do when you discover rust:
Although this won’t do a perfect job in removing rust or blemishes – What I like to do is use emory paper or (non-metal) scouring pads with a little bit of oil to remove the rust – BUT PLEASE REMEMBER TO WIPE ALL OF THE OIL OFF THE BLADE BEFORE PLAYING.
The oil I use is WD-40 – but any light oil will work.
Any rust or blemishes on your saw are purely cosmetic and will in no way affect your music.
If you will be putting your saw away for any extended amount of time then it is a good idea to spray it with a coating of oil – but remember to remove the oil prior to playing. BUT REMEMBER TO ALWAYS WIPE OFF ALL OIL COMPLETELY BEFORE YOU PLAY – OIL WILL KILL YOU BOW!!!
Sorry, This is not really Musical Saw related – but this is such a cool tie knot that I had to share – And let’s say you are getting all decked out to play your singing saw in a jazz quintet or at a folk music festival – you would certainly want to look your best!
And speaking of getting dressed up for a musical performance, there is always the danger of rosin getting on your tuxedo pants (or black gown) – To guard against this, try draping a cloth over your knees first.
Being in a band can be immensely fullfilling – Of course, there is the downside… Frequently, you are dealing with musicians’ frail egos, venues that try to rip you off, drunk/obnoxious audience members…
But for some reason – people still form bands
Put together the band. – Usually, you have a core group of musician friends who you are comfortable playing with. Often, you will be missing a component. – So, you can go around giving other bands a listen and try to poach their members, post an ad and hold auditions, locate one by word of mouth, etc. – If you are already performing gigs, you may get lucky and find that one of your fans actually has the missing talent! Of course, this is the ideal situation. You can be sure this person loves the music and will have a strong comittment to the band.
Name the band – this is always best done when everyone is toasted. You will possibly come up with some name that at the time was absolutely hillarious or deeply meaningful, yet when everyone is bach in his/her right mind the chosen name will be awful, flat, bizarre, etc. – Sorry, this is just how most band names are chosen.
Draft a contract up – You should be able to download various templates off the web. It is very unlikely that a startup band will have the resources to hire an attorney to cobble up a contract
Line up some gigs – Lots of times bars will hold open mic jams which do dual duty as auditions. – You are essentially giving away your music for free, but it’s a good way to parlay them into paying gigs. Deliberate over what type of environment you will be compatible with and pursue that. For instance, would you fit in at wedding receptions? – if so, start building up your network of wedding related professionals: DJ’s, Wedding stores, photographers, flowers, etc. You can collaborate with them and give each other leads. Or if you could fit into the corporate convention scene – line up those contacts. Try to think of other venues than just playing bars or coffee houses.
Other issues: promoting your band, recording a demo, …
Most bands disintegrate – and probably, yours will too. – One preson usually ends up doing the majority of the grunt work while everyone else just shows up at the last minute to play. And you’ll have the unreliable screwoffs who will show up drunk or not at all or sub out the night before. – But you’ll almost certainly have some peaks – and will generate a lifetime of memories.
I received this request – Please contact him if you can help out!
I’m working on a sound project right now, and I would love to feature early recordings of the saw. I’m focused mostly on the 20s, 30s, and 40s. I know Jimmy Rodgers used the saw in a song called Home Call and I’d love to find more tunes of that ilk. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much and Happy Sawing!
Brian Linds
If you can think of any, please add them by clicking the “Leave a comment” link below.
How many times have you found yourself in the position of needing a Musical Saw to wrap up your recording session? Loads of times, right?
Well, fear not! – Here is a useful service provided by SawLady. Send her the incomplete mp3 and she will dub in the saw part. Voila! – Your recording is complete! – Visit SawLady for particulars.
Mind officially blown by For Score App for Ipad 2!! Sheet music pdf viewer, colored pencil annotation, highlighter and much, much more. $4.99 well spent! There is a Bluetooth pedal as well for hands free page turning.
