MUSICAL SAW
The musical saw is a curious and weird instrument, it is probably the only work tool used to make music, it is called a “sound sheet” too.
It is a sheet of steel that, rubbed with an arc. To get the sound, the edge of the saw is rubbed with a bow as if it were a violin. This causes a vibration of the metal that results in the sound that we can hear To produce the different notes, what you do is bend the saw more or less sharply. If the blade is less bent, the sound is lower, but if the blade is more bent, the sound is higher.
​
The inventor of the musical saw is unknown, but that it was at the beginning of the XIX century. In the early 1920s composers of contemporary and popular music wrote for this instrument. Probably the first was Dmitri Shostakovich. He included the musical saw in the movie scores, The New Babylon (1929), The Nose (1928) and in Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district (1934).

But the more known interpreter of the musical saw was the German Singer and actress Marlene Dietrich. She learned to play it while shooting the flim Café Elektric in Vienna in 1927.
​
Other player was, Natalia Paruz “the saw Lady”, played this instrument in films, commercials and orchestras throughout the world. In France, Emmanuel Brun composed several works for musical saw.
​
There are music festivals dedicated to this instrument, in Spain it has been sice 1984 en the Madrid town of Los Molinos.
Telva Vázquez