You know how their faces contort when hitting certain notes or rhythms? Why is that triggered in the face? Is it an emotional response? Communication by facial expression? Vestigial from some other process?
The funk
You see, the Funk is a living creature. It’s 'bout the size of a medicine ball, but covered in teats. It came from another planet, and landed on Bootsy Collins’s house.
Back then Bootsy was just a simple farmer. But he took one look at all of those mauve titties and he lost his mind. He began to milk the Funk. Made himself a Funk shake. Began to feel fizzy inside. He found he could see 'round corners. Suddenly, he passed out. But when he came to, baby, he was slapping a bass guitar fast and loose like some kind of delirious, funky priest.
Bootsie explains how to play funk bass in a 3 minute video where he only says “play the root on every downbeat” but then he plays funky ass shit on the other notes and doesn’t explain that part
Emoting musical thoughts and feelings -
Just like your face emotes surprise, disgust, anger, taste and smell…
Source: professional musician >40yrs
Emotion.
Music the the closest thing to real magic we have.
Edit: that said, some people have… weird facial tics when playing that are distracting, and sometimes disturbing. Two guys on YouTube who review gear, and stuff, who I won’t name, seem like really nice guys, guys you’d want to hang and play with. But, one chews his tongue the entire time, and the other stares stone faced like a robot into the camera the entire time. The latter has worked on that after people mentioned it, and is much better about it.
To be clear, I’m not mocking them. Like I said, they seem like really cool dudes. But that kind of thing can take all of your attention, instead of listening to the playing.
Music the the closest thing to real magic we have.
That’s a stretch and 3 halves, when we have quantum computers and other fun science hobby projects
In this instance, polyrhythms caused this face
Literally made me snort. HAHAHA.
I remember an interview with a guitarist. He recalled being chewed out by the director of a video they were shooting. Their conversation went something like this:
“You need to stop making such ugly faces while playing.” “But it just happens! I can’t help it!” “Your guitar isn’t even plugged in to anything. Knock it off with the goddam faces.”
On the same tangent, there was a band called Flyleaf that had a minor hit in 2005 called “All Around Me.”
In the video, the bass player is hopping around like he’s high on crack the entire video. It’s extremely distracting. The director should have nailed his feet to the floor.
I always assumed they were just getting into it, assuming you aren’t talking about expressions caused by just playing the instrument in general (like with brass and wind instruments).
I was initially going to call it guitar face, but drummers make some wild expressions too. Though as a listener, I will also sometimes involuntarily make them too. Seems most of us aren’t immune.
For me, I think it’s whatever face I make when I’m in the zone. I’m not really aware of what I look like or contrive to look a certain way. But if I crack a smile, that’s a pretty good tell that I goofed up somewhere.
One time I was playing a Robbie Burns event where we were all encouraged to wear kilts. I made the mistake of putting my phone in the sporran (a kind of purse that hangs right over your crotch) and it started vibrating incessantly. I can’t even imagine the faces I was making that night!
I believe the term you’re looking for is “stank face”. I’ll sometimes do this when I’m listening to a song and a part is especially virtuosic or surprising. When you see a musician doing it it’s often either concentration or them hitting sort of a flow state where they’re really feeling what they’re playing.
Years of practice
I think our brains can only do so much major cognitive work at a time. Playing from your soul, and feeling big feelings, these things override the ability to maintain social control over your facial expression. Perhaps keeping emotions off our faces is a skill that evolved more recently than having emotions, and thus it’s the first to go when we’re concentrating on other things.
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Concentration and focus, sometimes expression or simply indulgence. It can happen in other situations too. Sports for instance. Music is just one of those abstract things where you need to keep focus for a longer duration.
Try tapping your finger in a steady rhythm counting 1,2,3,4 repeatedly. After a while you’ll want to close your eyes. Eventually you’ll make a tap that is ever so slightly early or late and you’ll probably start smirking or tighten other facial muscles. If that doesn’t happen to you, perhaps try holding a dumbbell in a straight arm for as long as you can. Most people will start doing weird faces before they inevitable have to give up, even if the funny faces does nothing to keep the dumbbell up.
That makes sense. It seems the expressions are often tied to the music —raised eyebrows when playing a high note, something like surprise when hitting cymbals, scrunching when it’s nasty. So maybe involuntary but relative expressions from concentration and focus?
My choirmaster years ago taught us that raising your eyebrows actually does help you reach the top of your vocal range, so that might actually be technique? Though I’m not a professional singer by any stretch, so who am I to say.
Keeps you from going flat too. Was in a large choir. Works really well.
You should check out the Fairy Voice Mother on YouTube. She talks all about how positioning the lips, jaw, and larynx in certain ways helps create certain sounds. Very interesting!
Raising the eyebrows keeps one from going flat.
I think the term you are looking for is stank face. It happens naturally when you appreciate it. Obviously happens more in musicians due to their already innate general draw to music
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