Rich, how do you type all that and not have the page time out?

Gotta be a fast typer!!!! Typist??? Well anyway, according to my occupational therapists friends, back 20 or so years ago the last time I saw them in person, you just about cannot control what your face does when you are focused, engaged, challenged, etc. That's why the crayon worked for me when I was learning the fiddle.  It sorta locked my mouth and jaws right where they were.

I don't know how much about opera anybody here knows about or cares about, but back when my daughter got really interested and started studying opera and taking voice lessons, Kathleen Battle was a big Metropolitan Opera singer. She was from right across the river in the Cincinnati area...so my daughter followed her some as a teenager and took an interest in her career. Anyway, she apparently went nuts and got kicked out of the Met for throwing her outifts around and yelling at other singers to stop watching her mouth. Wow. I really wish I coulda been there to see the exact details of what was involved...her side, her experience, her reasons...I think we can guess the other sides' experience with that as just observing nutty, crazy, inappropriate temper tantrums. But...would like an insight into her side of it. But we'll never know. I think she went on from there to become a jazz singer.

I'll be honest... I didn't read all the chapters in this conversation, but always found that a banjo player, even if they don't smile or say much comes in handy when seeing if the stage is level... the drool comes out of both sides of their mouth.

Peggy - I saw Doc Watson several times, provided sound reinforcement sometimes, helped with a couple recording projects, shot an album cover photo, and played one show with him at Merlefest. I wasn't always in a good place to see, but I don't remember him ever moving his mouth like in that video! Maybe I was just paying too much attention to the music.
Thinking about it, I don't think any performers I've known, or favorites I've seen, have had any distracting facial habits.

John Hartford is a pretty extreme example of moving the mouth while playing.

Itzakh Perlman does it as well, but it’s not as severe.

My friends had a name for the phenomenon...not just among musicians, but lots of other tasks people do...measuring wood to cut, dentistry (watch your dentist's facial expressions while they are filling your tooth)...I don't remember what they called it...something that sounded neurological. They said it was totally normal and meant a person was seriously engaged in some highly challenging and demanding neurological task or something like that. I could call the wife...unfortunately the husband, who was our lifelong friend, good guitar and bass player, general nice guy and alternative health care worker for the best Chinese herbalist in the state...unfotunately he recently passed away. But his wife is still there. Anyway there is a term for the phenomenon and it's normal and very common for people engaged in some complex neurolgical activity, according to those guys. I would never have noticed except I was shocked that they were busy observing this in my own poor ol' face while I was trying to play some cool tunes I had recently learned to play on guitar...lol. Then I felt totally stupid until they explained it's ok...because of their training they just always watched that kinda stuff in people. Makes me wonder even more how the Lawrence Welk crowd ever re-trained their brains to hold a big happy face the entire time they were playing.

Speaking of Roy Clark... youtu.be/QhiKgeJV3k0?si=krVu3K6gpOtPZuw0

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Originally posted by farmerjones

Rich, how do you type all that and not have the page time out?

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I have had pages expire a number of times (it's so frustrating when you're just finishing the last paragraph and everything vanishes). If a post is getting fairly long, I copy what I have so far and paste into the Notes app where I can finish it. Then I can copy it from Notes and paste into Fiddle Hangout when it's done. I have gotten faster at typing on my phone over time, but I've never been a good typist. 

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Originally posted by JonD

I dunno... faces can get in the way of the music (mine does for sure) but I'll make some exceptions, like for this guy (on the right), just giving 150% all the time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVkXWNytodI

 

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Aw, he is enjoying the heck out of it!
I played this with a concertina player last time at session, and I never realized how good it sounds with harmonies!