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
I know the video you’re talking about. It’s great. Don’t they have a song “up on the downbeat”?
I was just quoting a British comedy (the mighty Boosh) in which a character finds a creature that found “the funk” haha. Look up “Old Gregg” if you want some dumb humor with some music in it.
Old Gregg is actually Noel Fielding? Richmond from the IT crowd. Great comedian.
In this instance, polyrhythms caused this face
Literally made me snort. HAHAHA.
Emoting musical thoughts and feelings -
Just like your face emotes surprise, disgust, anger, taste and smell…
Source: professional musician >40yrs
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.
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
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Real Devin Townsend hours
