# Sounds great, looks ridiculous



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Which instrument requires the instrumentalist to make the silliest faces?

I vote oboe:


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

I vote Lang Lang

oh, wait, "sounds great"

nevermind


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Keyboards are disqualified on the grounds that playing one does not require the involvement of one's face at all. With some exceptions.


----------



## DaDirkNL (Aug 26, 2013)

I voted flute. When someone plays the flute, it looks like they just farted. 




My point is made.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

View attachment 29443


.........................................................


----------



## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Alright. Singers shouldn't be included too, everybody knows that great singer makes only great faces:


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

WAHAH! I'm glad people are picking conductors! Yes, from my personal experience, they can have very... peculiar faces. Even if they're joking around, sometimes they're not, and if I'm not careful, they sometimes make me lose my focus and I might start laughing.

I think I look ridiculous when I play piccolo.  I look like I'm eating the mouthpiece and my mouth is scrunched up too much.


----------



## Reinhold (Nov 24, 2013)

Oboe. 'nuff said.


----------



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

I remember when we used to go to see Strawhead - an English folk group - where the main chap played the shawm - or as he described it - the musical table leg. He used to say, it made a lousy sound, but the player went *such *interesting colours. So that's my choice - OK it's an early oboe but it has a better effect.


----------



## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

My money and voice is on conductors.


----------



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> WAHAH! I'm glad people are picking conductors! Yes, from my personal experience, they can have very... peculiar faces. Even if they're joking around, sometimes they're not, and if I'm not careful, they sometimes make me lose my focus and I might start laughing.
> 
> I think I look ridiculous when I play piccolo.  I look like I'm eating the mouthpiece and my mouth is scrunched up too much.


Ridiculously virtuosic passage + piccolo =


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

aleazk said:


> Ridiculously virtuosic passage + piccolo =


Yes! She looks like she eating the mouth piece as do I. Only I think I look even sillier.


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

I have very fond associations from my early years with girls playing wind instruments, so none of that ever looks silly to me; however, guys with glasses playing oboes remind me of that character in Alice in Wonderland sitting on a toadstool smoking a hookah... I can't remember his name....


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

The Caterpillar?


----------



## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Honestly, the ones that look most ridiculous to me are instruments that don't even require one to struggle!!! Like guitarists getting way too much into their solos or drummers over-working themselves and putting all kinds of faces when only a simple beat is being played.


----------



## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Antonio Pappano can't conduct without sucking on an imaginary peppermint. Pick a random video...you know I'm right.


----------



## Copperears (Nov 10, 2013)

ahammel said:


> The Caterpillar?


Is that all he is called?!

Remembering the clarinetist in high school whom I accompanied when she was practicing a movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto.... no, not a silly face, ever! Or at least I never thought so. Wonderful tone, though; that's hard to develop control over on clarinet. Ah, memories.


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

If memory serves, none of the animals in the _Alice_ books are given names except Dinah (Alice's kitten) and Bill the Lizard.


----------



## DrKilroy (Sep 29, 2012)

Conductors often make stupid faces but they are not required to do so...

Best regards, Dr


----------



## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

I snuck conductors in there because 1) conductors are quite often required to cue one section or another with their eyes or eyebrows, their hands being otherwise engaged and 2) I needed a 15th option.


----------



## aakermit (Nov 23, 2013)

My grandfather was a professional musician who played the bassoon and most other woodwinds too. As a young lad I was fascinated to watch him practice in the living room. He would soak the bassoon reeds in a shot glass and when he blew he made (a least to me) the most comical faces. He would turn beet red, squint, grimace and contort his face. It was funny and scary at the same time. Sometimes I though he would have a heart attack.


----------



## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I have voted for the singers. Consider for example this performance of Schubert's Winterreise by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (who I dearly love as a singer):






The expressiveness of his singing seems to stand in direct proportion to the comical effect produced by his facial expressions.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I think the chin rest on the violin and viola help to distort some facial features, especially if the player is, how can one say, heavy in the jowl?


----------

