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The Singing Saw Gazette

About Me

Hal Rammel has been playing freely improvised music on the musical saw since the late 1970s. His first public performances on musical saw were with the duo trans (Birmingham-based improvisers LaDonna Smith and Davey Williams) at Russell Thorne’s Emergency Theater in Chicago in 1982.
In subsequent years Hal Rammel has performed on musical saw with Russell Thorne, Johannes Bermark, Michael Zerang, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Yehuda Yannay, Lou Mallozzi, Bob Marsh, Steve Nelson-Raney, John Corbett, Terri Kapsalis, LaDonna Smith, Paul Lovens, Matt Turner, Thomas Gaudynski, Tom Hamilton, Thurston Moore, Donald Rafael Garrett, and the Nihilist Spasm Band.
Hal Rammel’s recorded performances on musical saw include duets with guitarist John Corbett, trios with violinist Terri Kapsalis and John Corbett (as the trio Van’s Peppy Syncopators), duets with Steve Nelson-Raney, and a trio improvisation with Thurston Moore and Terri Kapsalis at the 1997 No Music Festival in London, Ontario (released on E.K. Records).
Recordings by Hal Rammel:
- The Devil’s in the Details (Penumbra Music CD002). Freely improvised duets with acoustic guitarist John Corbett. Hal Rammel plays musical saw along with several acoustic string and percussion instruments of his own design and construction.
- Van’s Peppy Syncopators (Penumbra Music CD003). Freely improvised trios with violinist Terri Kapsalis and acoustic guitarist John Corbett. Hal Rammel plays musical saw along with several acoustic string and percussion instruments of his own design and construction.
- Breathing (Penumbra Music CD006). Freely improvised duets with saxophonist Steve Nelson-Raney. Hal Rammel plays musical saw along with several acoustic and electroacoustic instruments of his own design and construction.
As an author and historian Hal Rammel has written extensively on musical instrument invention and innovation for Experimental Musical Instruments, Rubberneck, and other publications. His liner note essays have appeared in recordings released by CRI (on the music of Lucia Dlugoszewski) and Atavistic (on the duo trans and on the recently reissued Strange Strings by Sun Ra). His full-length study of American Folklore Nowhere in America: The Big Rock Candy Mountain and other Comic Utopias was published by Univeristy of Illinois Press in 1990.
“For the past three decades, American instrument inventor Hal Rammel has engaged in a quest for the truth hosted deep within the American vernacular. Extending the examples set by such autodidacts as Harry Partch and Harry Smith, he moves through multiple art forms, from improvised sound to pinhole photography, leftfield musicology, sculpture and collage, tracing an alternative topography of the American underground.”
- Jon Dale, The Wire, April 2007

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 28/01/2008
Band Website: www.myspace.com/halrammel
Band Members: “A piece of clay can be musical when it’s kicked at the right time to make the right musical accent, but singing . . . yes, the saw is.” (Paul Lovens, letter to Hal Rammel, 1989)

The Singing Saw Gazette is a forum for musical saw research organized by Hal Rammel pursuing both historical research on the singing saw as well as contemporary composition and freely improvised music on this unique musical instrument.

"In the late 80s I began conducting interviews with saw players and composers with hopes of publishing a semi-regular newsletter called The Singing Saw Gazette, interviewees included Jerome Cooper, George Crumb, David Burge, Charles K. Noyes, and others. The newsletter idea was a bit beyond my means at the time and the project was filed away in the archives. Today, with new means at hand, perhaps some of this material can see the light of day."
- Hal Rammel, February 2008
Influences: Masters of the musical saw:
- Eddie Moore (The Dewey Redman Quartet)
- Roy Brooks (M'Boom)
- Jerome Cooper
- Charles K. Noyes
- Niels Harrit (The Contemporary Jazz Quintet)
- Tom Scribner
- Jim Turner
- Sam Moore
- Mr. Andolphi

Sounds Like: “At l’Ours, on Darvon Street, between two cocktails, what is that siren’s voice, that impalpable sob, that uncertain quivering, sweeter than the saxophone’s murmur, richer and more distant than the most exqisitie human voice, which blends itself among the syncopations that sustain the blues or the rags to which the customers of this charming bar dance?”
- Darius Milhaud on Mr. Andolfi, charmer of tools ("La Scie," 1927)

“New instruments have been created, which in their exaggerated emotionalism caricature true sentiment; the singing saw whimpering under the gentle strokes of a hammer or a bow, the flex-a-tone whining . . . gliding amorously from note to note. All these instruments produce ready-made sentimentality based on excessive vibrato and glissando.”
- Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments, 1940
Record Label: Penumbra Music
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

Saw music in the movies

David Leans lovely comedy drama Hobsons Choice (1954) contains a wonderful and crucial scene in which the drunken Hobson (played by Charles Laughton!) stumbles out of a pub and crosses a brick stree...
Posted by on Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:27:00 GMT

Niels Harrit: Saw in Action 1966-67

Niels Harrit: Saw in Action 1966-67It might be argued that Niels Harrit is the Albert Ayler of the saw and the reissue of his recording with the Contemporary Jazz Quintet from 1966-67 on Atavistic's U...
Posted by on Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Some Favorite Recordings of Improvised Musical Saw

Percussionist EDDIE MOORE (from San Francisco) played and recorded for many years with saxophonist Dewey Redman, in his trio with bassist Donald Rafael Garrett and in his later quartet that often incl...
Posted by on Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:08:00 GMT

Playing Musical Saw and Learning to Improvise

When I began playing saw - thinking about a place for it's unique capabilities in the context of freely improvised music - recordings of jazz or freely improvising saw players were unknown or unavail...
Posted by on Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:53:00 GMT