the.com/musical saw
A carpentry tool that moonlights as a ghost, wielded by bending metal, not teeth.
means A handsaw played as an instrument by bending its blade into an S-curve and drawing a bow or mallet across the smooth edge, producing an eerie, voice-like tone that changes pitch as the curve shifts.
from Rooted simply in 'musical' (relating to music, from Greek 'mousike,' art of the Muses) plus 'saw' (an Old English word, 'sagu,' for a toothed cutting tool, related to the verb 'to see' only in the sense of both tracing back to a root meaning 'to cut'). The practice itself is the real story: lumberjacks and farmhands in the 1800s, idly bending saws to test their flex, noticed the tone and began playing them with bows borrowed from fiddles, turning a woodshed tool into a parlor and vaudeville act by the early 1900s.
- how it works
- pitch comes from the curve, not the length
- played with
- a bow, a mallet, or bare fingers
- sound profile
- close to a theremin or human voice
- origin
- popularized by vaudeville and Appalachian folk acts