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?
Emoting musical thoughts and feelings -
Just like your face emotes surprise, disgust, anger, taste and smell…
Source: professional musician >40yrs
In this instance, polyrhythms caused this face
Literally made me snort. HAHAHA.
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 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.
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
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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