You Saw That Correctly

Is that even an instrument?

Welcome to our Musical Zodiac, in which we arbitrarily match instruments to personality types and use that as an excuse to talk about our favorite musickers.

Pisces is the 12th sign of the zodiac, a sign said to be artistic with interests that “lie in the mystical,” and they are “dreamy and have a deep empathy.” Today’s idiophone has that mystical, ethereal quality, but it comes from a humble and practical source:

The Saw.

Here is “Saw Lady” Natalia Paruz, performing the Bach/Gounod “Ave Maria”

(You can follow @SawLady on Bluesky for more!)

As you can see here, the bowed saw is flexed to control pitch and resonates throughout its length. There is no mechanism for articulation, so the challenge is to bend the sound (literally) using only the skill of your ear.

The always adventurous They Might Be Giants features the instrument in their historically accurate song about the 11th U.S. President….

…played by Mr. Julian Koster, of Neutral Milk Hotel, a band that sometimes uses the saw in their recordings:

As you can imagine, the sound of this instrument has its limitations, which makes it hard to find examples of its use in popular music. (Sorry. No Korn this week!)

It is also easy to replicate the effect using keyboards or guitars. When I started working on this post, the first song that I wanted to include is from the Russian band Aquarium (Аквариум)—but I couldn’t figure out from the liner notes whether they use the saw or not. I think I hear it in the first track of their 1993 album, Favorite Songs of Rameses the IV. Either my ability to translate Russian is too weak, or they simply used this guitar: