Playing with facial hair

[BopEuph]

I was just hired at a theme park as a Latin bassist. Since I'm Italian, I further helped the cause by growing a beard for the audition. The entertainment department loves the beard and has asked me to keep it.

I'm having a difficult time getting used to playing with a beard. It's not so bad on tuba, but on the tenor range instruments it's very weird. It's uncomfortable, and feel like if I don't set the mouthpiece right, it will pull my hair up in the opposite direction it's growing rather than push it down on my face.

I'm already struggling playing this quirky G bass herald trumpet, and feel like the beard is adding yet another variable to it. I know some guys trim the hair right around their embouchure to help, but my mouthpieces go significantly into both the upper and lower lip, and would have remove far too much hair for that to be worthwhile.

Any pro players make this transition from clean-shaven to a full, grown-in beard? How hard was this transition?

[bgozdowski]

I made the switch a few years ago. Having to shave my upper and lower lips everyday and sometimes twice a day made my lips fatigue very quickly, so I grew it out.

At first, it's extremely weird. The hardest part for me was relearning how to create a seal between my lips and the mouthpiece. I also had to expirament with trimming my mustache at different lengths until I found what worked for me. I found it uncomfortable to play if any of the hair was near the edge of my upper lip.

It took a month or so to get comfortable with it, but now I greatly prefer it for my own playing. I know guys that keep the middle of their mustaches thin to avoid pulling the hair, or shave under the mustache and place the mouthpiece under it.

[Rick Denney]

Wasn't there a thread on this just a few weeks ago? The upshot of that thread was: Beard = loss of low register.

I play with a beard, but nobody ever asks me to play below about a low F. But I think the beard has led to playing with more pressure to maintain the seal.

Rick "vanity trumps all" Denney

[Donn]

Wasn't there a thread on this just a few weeks ago? The upshot of that thread was: Beard = loss of low register.

Playing with facial hair. The upshot to me is more like, experience differs. Some players do notice a difference.