Wind instruments and left-handers
We often get queries from parents concerned that their left-handed child is not being allowed to play their chosen instrument in the most comfortable way for a left-hander.One concerned mum contacted us on behalf of her 5 year old daughter Kerri who had started to play the recorder and was progressing extremely well, playing as her left-handed mum did with her right hand at the top of the instrument. Things began to go wrong when Kerri was told by her teacher to use her left hand to play the top notes, which she found very uncomfortable and thus dented her conficence and enthusiasm to play. Why, asks her mum, does it matter?
We asked advice at the Royal College of Music and the Centre for Young Musicians. Adopting the standard hand position for wind instruments is important, it seems, because although the recorder would appear to be pretty ambidextrous, should a child wish to progress to other wind instruments such as the clarinet, oboe or saxophones, the lower holes are positioned for the right-hand fingers. However, both hands need to be equally flexible and are worked just as hard so these instruments could be considered even-handed. It is unfortunate that Kerri's teacher did not alter her fingering when she first picked up the instrument, as she would have then played her first notes with her left hand, and have become accustomed to holding the instrument this way. Once positioning has been learnt, it is very uncomfortable to reverse it.
Interestingly though, the standard finger position could in fact be considered to be advantageous for left-handed players, as Club Member Vicky who plays the oboe and recorder pointed out. Vicky found that since the first notes you learn are with the left hand, she feels greater co-ordination and control than right-handers would. This point is taken even further for players of the French horn, an instrument which gives left-handers a distinct advantage, as it requires geater dexterity in the left hand than the right.
We will be adding articles on playing other instruments soon, and do add your comments and experiences on playing wind instruments in the box below.
More information on learning to play instruments left-handed is available in Lauren's Book "Your Left-handed Child" published by Hamlyn and available from our online shop.
Comments 72
Also another thing I find interesting is that I also play a bit of guitar. I have a Yamaha Pacifica for guitar (as apparently this is one of the easiest to learn to play). The guitar I have is right handed, I've also got Guitar Hero with the basic plastic "guitar" controller - ok it's similar to a guitar shape but it's actually quite different to playing a real guitar. On Guitar Hero you can actually play guitar in "lefty flip" mode which emulates a left-handed guitar. I tried it once in lefty flip mode to see what the difference is and I actually found it much harder to play.
I'm getting more used to playing the right handed guitar and to me the right handed guitar seems to make sense for left handed - although most of the time it seems actually both hands seem to need some kind of co-ordination anyway. From my view the hand doing the frets (which on a right handed guitar is the left hand) seems to need more co-ordination as you need to know where the hand is on the fret board and which strings it's holding down, the hand strumming the strings needs to obviously be able to strum different strings so co-ordination is also needed there, but it seems there is less co-ordination needed on the right hand on a left handed guitar because if you strum the wrong strings slightly it doesn't make as much difference to the sound as pressing the wrong frets does.
I believe the answer is to expect that all musical instruments should be made for left handed players as well as right handed players. (Just like there are left handed guitars.) And that all children should be allowed to play and hold all instruments the way they choose.
I'm frankly shocked and extremely disappointed that this website, a dedicated left handed forum should still be shamelessly promoting the acceptability of forcing a left handed person to learn an instrument the right handed way!!!
It's about time the likes of The Royal College of Music and Centre for Young Musicians should be challenged about their archaic attitudes to left handedness.
Think about this - yes you can teach a lefty child from an early age to do instinctual tasks the right handed way. Yes they might become good at those tasks and manage ok, but the learning process is 10 times harder, and the lack of flow and natural instinct will always hinder the left handed person from achieving their full potential.
Here is my Parrot theory - "You can teach a parrot to say words, you may even teach it to recite Shakespeare, but that parrot will NEVER write it's own symphony"
It's the same as how you can teach non genius 3 year old children to recognise and repeat back the names of numbers and letters, but they will not be able to understand the concept of counting, mental arithmetic, writing or reading.
Left handedness is not a "choice" or a "preference" like a lot of right handed people would like to promote. Just the same as right handedness is not a "choice" or a "preference". All children MUST be allowed to create and express themselves in the way that comes naturally to them. And the areas where this is most important are music, sport and art. How cruel to know that left handed folk are more creative because they are controlled by the right hand side of the brain, then to hinder that creativeness by making them do things opposite to what comes naturally!!
We at Linksgespielt also believe that children should be allowed to play their instruments on the side they feel most comfortable with. For many left-handed players, it feels most natural and simply right to play woodwind instruments with the left hand down. This gives them a better feeling of stability and security when playing.
We have created a website about left-handed playing musicians, mainly in the professional classical field, to make the "left" way of playing more visible.
*assuming a Baroque-, not a German-fingered recorder
iicult.
They are made for
- right handed flutists with back, shoulder or neck pain.
Playing sometimes with a left hand instrument can relief such pain, as the mucles are brought in balance again.
- right handed teachers
Teaching with a left flute is much more fun, as teacher and student face each other.
- and for left handed students, of course.
More information you find here: https://www.viento-flutes.com/left-handed_concert_flute.php
Juergen Roos
VIENTO Querflöten, Germany
I'm working on my third year of clarinet, and I'm obviously a lefty.
I have no problems with playing, probably partially because the left hand is on the top. My first year, I had absolutely no trouble at all. My teacher highlighted me to the class, yet nobody knew of my "secret", which was (and is) being left-handed.
There is one other girl that I know of who's a lefty in my section. She is amazing! I find it odd and intriguing that our top two chairs (including me) are lefties. :)
Let me explain! - Originally, the Horn had no valves, and (my hat goes off to Herr Leutgeb and other early Hornists!!), "chromatic" notes - ie those not appearing naturally in the Harmonic Series - were produced by moving the right hand in and out of the "bell" of the instrument to varying degrees. - This is STILL done to "tune-on-the-fly"!
Interchangeable "Crooks" (pieces of tube of varying lengths) were then introduced to enable different "keys" to be played.
FINALLY, during the 19th century, VALVES were introduced, but the way of holding the Horn wasn't changed, resulting in a "Left-handed, Right-handed" instrument...............
- I hope that you can follow that!!
Andy Parker (a Left Handed Horn player!!)
So much easier with the keys on the left.
I play a few wind instruments too, but all right-handedly - I'm strongly lefty in most things, but pipes and horns (including bagpipes) seem natural enough the right way round.
I am a neurologist with interest in laterality of motor control.
I am a right hander and I play the violin. I read some of the comments which were made earlier by right and left handed players of different musical instruments. Handedness is primarily an expression as to which of the two hemispheres is in control of action (including that of speaking). Approximately 80 percent of people are left hemispheric in their laterality of motor control and 20 percent are right hemispheric. There is no circuitry for "ambidexterity). Of those who consider themselves right handed, approximately 80 persent are right hemispheric for action (i.e. are wired as left handers). Approximately 50 percent of left handers are wired as right handers (i.e. are left hemispheric for action). Therefore, 1 in five person in society displays (claims) a handedness for which they are wired in the opposite direction (a huge minority that had caused a Babylonian chaos before the discovery of the circuitry underpinning handedness (see above).
There is a simple way to find out which way a normal person is wired: simply draw two lines at the same time while holding a pen in each hand. The hand opposite the hemisphere of action draws the longer and the straighter line (or draws a larger box if the object was to draw a box with both hands at the same time). This is because the real dominant hand is directly connected to the opposite (action) hemisphere, whereas the nondominant hand must await the arrival of the command issued in the action hemisphere to reach the other hemisphere (which is the "slave processor" for the action hemisphere through the corpus callosum). This causes a delay in moving the nondominant side of the body equal to the inter-hemispheric transfer time (About 20 milliseconds or more). This is why the bowing is ahead of the fingering in violin playing and why there is a "melody-lead of the right hand' in piano playing. And why (I suspect) the left hand is held on top of the right in wind instruments (i.e. providing a more even playing field for both hands (as it takes time for the wind to reach the farther end of the tube played by the faster right hand).
Those who are interested in more information can acces my scientific articles online at www.mimickingman.com
I. Derakhshan, md, Neurologist
I started out like most children with a recorder at the age of 6 or 7 and didn't start the flute until I was around 12 or 13. If you are musical you are musical, I do not think it has anything to do with handedness, and wind instruments are no more difficult to play with one hand on the top than on the bottom. You cannot play the flute the other way round because you all need to be sitting in the same direction in the orchestra. It would be chaos if some were pointing one way and some the other.
What was interesting was that, as a bit of fun, a musician made a "left-handed" flute and it was in a well-known flute shop in London when I went in once to have my flute serviced. I was about 15 at the time and probably around grade 5. A professional, right-handed flautist was in the shop at the same time. He picked it up, but could not even get a note out of it, as his brain somehow could not cope with it being round the wrong way. Yet, I played it straight away. Very strange!
My husband and 2 of our 3 children are left handed, but they are each ambidextrous to a degree, they play brass instruments with ease, and our eldest son taught himself to play guitar on a borrowed guitar which of course was right handed.
I am not sure if this will be different in a few years time, as my parents' generation was still taught to write with their right hand not matter what to 'train' both hands, and because 'it doesn't make much of a difference.' Well, that has been proven wrong, and I wonder if in ten years or so all left-handed children will be taught on lefty instruments...
I have been advised to buy my child a conventional recorder, and am currently trying to decide whether I should just go ahead and by a left-handed one nonetheless!
As for left-handed musicians having an advantage over right-handed musicians when it comes to strings...I know for a fact that that's not true, since I am a musician myself (violin). Also, if that was actually the case, why are instruments not built in a way that favors the (right-handed) majority of musicians - in a world where everything else is geared toward right-handed people? This argument does not follow, IMO.
Also learned to knit right handed when the Girl Scout leaders couldn't figure a way to teach me to do it the opposite way. I can use the mouse either hand, but the really important things like eating and writing are left-only.
I'm teaching also, here in Portugal, some children how to play the recorder. To the righties, I usually say that the right hand is in the bottom because it has four holes, and the left hand has only three (no counting with the thumb). Well, to the lefties, i say that they have to use the thumb, and so the left hand is in the top of the record!
If you can find a half decent, right handed guitar teacher, it really shouldn't be too much of a problem for your son to learn from her/him. They would just simply sit opposite each other, in stead of side by side. Also, if the teacher has to show your son a certain grip and can't figure out how to do it left-handed, I'm sure your son will have no problem at all observing the teacher doing it right-handed and then switching around to left-handed himself. After all, as lefties, we have to deal with this ALL the time and our brains are used to this kind of problem-solving ...! ;-)
btw, since I am a total lefty- do nothing right-handed, grew up wondering why I even had a right arm, except for balance- I have never found it easy to adapt in a right-handed world, whether instruments, tools, sports, whatever.
Also, in Venezuela, my grandfather was a leading musician of his day (about 50's-90's). He wrote many left handed method books. I do not know if these books can be bought anywhere other than the family store. Also, he made left handed instruments for himself. In countries such as Venezuela, it is not uncommon for musicians to make their own instruments. He spent a lot of time studying each instrument so that he could make left handed versions for himself and other musicians.
I've also found that a greater percentage of musicians are left handed, as compared with the general population.
I know when I was a kid *someone told me* you could buy left handed versions of these instruments, but you normally needed to add about £1000 to the price (which seems a bit excessive now), but would have been right the 25 years ago I'm thinking of.
Co incidently I now write with either hadn, and play Lawn bowls using either hand depending in which direction I wiish to aim the bowl.
Left-handed Trombone? No such practical thing! I myself am cross-dominant (lefty writer and eater but throw, shoot, use scissors righthanded (though that is not direct definition of cross-dominant)) and play trombone. While I can understand the usefulness of lefthanded accordian and maybe trumpet, clarinet, and oboe, most other instuments us lefties need to conform to the righties. I say this becuase of the dinner-table example: no-one wants to sit with a lefty because our elbows bump their elbows, making for spilled soup. Consequently, a violinist would not want the head of the violin knocking into the lefty's vioin head. The same goes for flutes; much consternation would be raised about possible damage to the end of the flute due to an awkward grasp. It also looks wrong when placed in a group of righties. The same goes for a trombone: I would hate anyone whose bell kept bumping into the bell of my Bach 42 BO. I mean, it's a really nice 'Bone (I even gave it a name, it's so cool: Mr. Trombone, Mr T. for short, but that's not my point.
This is what I've been building up to: a really nice bass trombone and some tenors have one or more valves: keys played with the fingers of the hand gripping the main bulk of the bone (not the slide). Correct trombone grip has the left arm holding the bone (and consequently playing the valves) and the right arm operating the slide. If you're gonna play the trombone "left-handed-ly" you'd better hope to high heaven you're awesome at it; thus you are first chair and thus get placed at the far right of the row, which would necessitate the trombones occupy the right side of the stage (the left to the audience). Both of these situations rarely ever happen. Otherwise, you'll be placed at the end of the row, reserved for either the bass bone (which has a valve and is thus held and valved with the left hand) or most likely the last chair, the player with the least skill. For this reason you never find a trombone with a valve designed to be played "left-handedly."
But doesn't it make sense to have your left arm, the bulkier one (assuming you're left-handed, which I assume pretty much everyone on this site is) holding the bulk of the trombone? True, writing notes on my music with my left hand is awkward, but it's for the greater good of the group to endure a little discomfort rather to cause discomfort to other.
Accordianists can have the sides switched and be fine, it's a perfectly ambidextrous instrumen; oboes could have it swapped also, none of the elbows jut out, ame with clarinet, but isn't the mark of a really good musician versatility in genre AND instrument? Trumpet could be played and built ambidextrously, but Maynard Ferguson and Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, both stellar musicians, play both trumpet and trombone. Clarinet players find it realatively easy to switch to saxophone, as the fingerings are very similair; the same goes for flute and oboe. But if one were to switch from left-handed clarinet to left-handed tenor or baritone saxophone, one would find that their unique stance would cause much bumping around with the instrument, causing the need for the pads to be realigned at great expense. Finding a "left-handed" instrument is very costly regardless of what instrument you choose to play.
I think it all boils down to this- being a lefty is fun- making someone spill soup is really fun, provided you're not in a formal dinner- and it definitely has advantages- lefties are scientifically proven to be smarter, make more money, and be better musicians and gamers. But in the universal language of music, I think it best for a universal standard be adopted for holding and playing the golden notes. Besides, I play piano also and find that being left-handed has advantage on a "right-handed" piano- supporting the right hand's melody with the bass chords of the left hand is easier because the lefthander is inclined to play louder with the left than the right. Playing a lefty guitar I find difficult, as my more agile left hand fingers are reduced to strumming the strings rather than fretwork.
Finally, if one of us lefties is so awesome as to be called to demonstrate our instrument(s) to a group of aspiring musicians who may or may not have had experience playing our instrument and we, being the benevolent and generous people that we are, give our "left-handed" instrument to a right-handed kid, we just crippled that poor child's future by associating the instrument with a left-handed position. Inevitably their teacher will call on them and their parents to buy a regular instrument to conform with the band. Money is wasted on both sides- our possession was wasted on someone who had no use for it, and they had to buy a regular instrument to learn to play on. Old habits die hard, and the poor child now has to kick the old habit to learn the new (corrent) one. Thus we as a minority group have people of the majority wanting to highfive us- in the face. Oh what a shame.
I do not mean to offend anyone here- I just mean to say we have a chance to put aside the rather degrading position of having to conform to a right-handed world by having a universal model in a universal language- music! Isn't world peace a good thing? We are able to be as equals with our fellow people! Besides, in music, noone really cares if you're doing something right-handed or left-handed- we's just a-playin' our song- that's all that matters.
P.S. (Sorry for taking up so much space, but my personal view is that left-handed instruments are merely a novelty- not a serious option for a career. I'd love to play a left-handed trombone, but that wouldn't be very practical for anything besides show. I'd have to learn to play in tune all over again- very difficult to learn on a 'bone.)
I'm still playing my clarinet and saxophone to my class of special needs children and they appreciate my playing.
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