Skip to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

Young Composers Music Forum

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.

Is The Musical Saw Actually Considered 'pitched Percussion'?

Featured Replies

Finale classifies it as such...and my real question is, are there generally only musical saw specialists, where, in a normal symphony orchestra, the percussionists wouldn't be able to play this, if it was asked of them?

Just looked the instrument up (didn't even know it existed). Looks like you would probably classify it in the same group as the theremin where you need a specialist, and can't just ask some random percussionist to learn to play it in a day.

Usually you find people mastering musical saw outside symphonic orchestra. At least in Slovenia there are a few people, specialised in folk music which can play this instrument and they are invited as guest performers.

No I don't think a common percussionist can play it, it's quite hard to control it to play a tuned melody, no idea what kind of instrumentist the saw could be related to, but I've known only 2 and they were string players, Violin and Cello players, I once tried to play the saw with my violin bow, but couldn't do it, didn't sound at all :veryunsure:

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.