Here’s the highlight of my day (which shows you just how pathetic my life has become). While driving home I listened to an NPR program called Fair Game. Host Faith Salie must be almost as desperate as me because her post-drivetime oeuvre for today featured an interview with musical saw virtuoso Dale Stuckenbruck. I learned a few thing about saw playing that would otherwise have passed me by, such as the blade must be flexed into a symmetrical waveform curve with the amplitude of the wave corresponding to the pitch. The sound is produced by bowing at the point where the curvature crosses the x-axis. Mathematically this would be given by
A • sin(ωt + θ) = 0
The interview was interesting and Stuckenbruck is evidently dedicated to his instrument, he even has a CD out that’s available from Amazon. But to me saw music always invokes images of Joan Crawford experiencing psychotic hallucinations.
1 comment:
I have all of Mr.Stuckenbruck's efforts, including his work as a side man on "The Orchestra of things we don't normally think of as instruments played by bored degenerate Europeans",CD. Of particular note is their cover version of "Flight of the Bumble Bee" played on Saw, Spoons, Aerosol Cheese Dispenser, Nail Gun and Accordion. It marked the first time Dale Stuckenbruck played the electrified version of his instrument and I think I speak for both aficionados of his music when I say that it was a relief that he only lost one finger the effort.
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