If you're left-handed, and I know I am, you're a minority. No one can say for sure, but top scientists have measured the proportion of lefties at anything from 10 to 25 percent of the population. And you know how some people can be about minorities. You only have to consider some of the insults thrown at left-handers through the years.
Back in the 1930s, a supposedly eminent psychologist described the poor souls like this: "They squint, they stammer, they shuffle and shamble, they flounder about like seals out of water. Awkward in the house and clumsy in their games, they are fumblers and bunglers at whatever they do."
Language is usually an accurate gauge of attitude, and it does left-handers no favors. The word "left" has roots in Old English words meaning weak and paralyzed. "Sinister" is the Latin for left, "gauche" the French. Some slang terms for left-handers are pretty nasty, too. "Cack-handed," for example, uses the vulgar Latin cacare, to defecate, as a reference to the notion that the left hand is fit only for wiping the bum.
There are plenty of theories to explain why right-handedness has come to be considered right. They include the image of happy sun-worshippers in the northern hemisphere tracking the sun rightwards across the sky, and ancient warriors protecting their heart with the passive left hand while using the active right to hold useful, macho weapons.
Equally, dozens of theories exist to account for left-handedness, seen until relatively recently as a kind of deformity. But there remains no clear-cut explanation for the fact that a minority of people continue to turn out left-handed. All this might lead you to conclude that being a left-handed musician gives you an immediate handicap. In fact, mollydooker musicians have some advantages over the single-minded right-handed majority.
Single-minded? Most right-handers are completely right-handed. By that, I mean that anything they do with one hand, or with a dominant hand, they do with the right hand. But few wacky-handers are fully left-handed, because they're often forced to use their right hand for certain things in this right-handed world we inhabit.
And now you know that, I'm sure you'd like to find out just how left-handed or how right-handed you are. So here's a test. It's a simple adaptation from a longer one called the Edinburgh Inventory devised by Richard Oldfield in the '70s.
Here's a list of 10 activities. Write an R or an L next to each item: R, if you do it with your right hand; L, if you do it with your left hand.
- Writing with a pen or similar.
- Cutting with a knife (without a fork).
- Drawing with a pencil or similar.
- Using a spoon.
- Throwing something.
- Using a broom (your upper hand).
- Using scissors.
- Striking a match (the hand that holds the match).
- Using a toothbrush.
- Opening a box (the hand that holds the lid).
Once you've done that, add up your number of Ls or Rs or both, and that will provide your percentage, where one hit equals 10 percent to 10 hits for 100 percent. I'm a typical gammy-hander because I marked many of the 10 as Ls and some as Rs. I scored six Ls, which by this test makes me a 60 percent southpaw. Almost every right-hander will score 10 Rs, indicating they are 100 percent right-handed.
This ambidexterity that many left-handers develop can be useful. It means they'll have a better capability to use both hands equally—and that, surely, is an advantage on many instruments.
Let's call back those top scientists and ask them to take a quick journey into the brain. Careful, now. They tell us it's a bit like a big walnut, split into two hemispheres. In simple terms, the right half controls the left side of your body, and also seems to be responsible for creative, intuitive thinking, while the left hemisphere of the brain, controlling your body's right side, may well look after more logical processes.
From that, a common supposition arose that left-handers, who are more in touch with their right-brain, are therefore more creative than right handers. Left-handers will happily reel off selective lists of fellow cuddy-wifters, from Lady Gaga to Kurt Cobain, in an effort to "prove" this left-handed-equals-creative theory. The scientists, meanwhile, point to conflicting research that says it's more to do with gene activity in the spinal cord. You might say this is one of those instances of "on the one hand; on the other hand."
Left-handed musicians, like many fellow spuddy-handers, can face obstacles in life, depending on the instrument they adopt. Some left-handed drummers, for example, can take advantage of their ambidextrous leanings. The traditional method of learning rudiments, or stick patterns, encourages the ability to play with one hand the mirror image of the other.
Kit-playing, though, encourages either right-handedness or left-handedness in setting up. Most drummers therefore arrange the stuff around them conventionally "right-handed." Some who are left-handed will reverse that layout, with hi-hats to the drummer's right—Georgia Hubley with Yo La Tengo, for example. Other left-handers set up "right-handed"—Stewart Copeland with the Police, for example. Meanwhile, multiple YouTube vids of right-playing star drummers probably help encourage the conventional setup.
Back in the '80s, the jazz drummer Billy Cobham brought to rock an open-handed style of playing, which he'd been using for some time, where you lead with the left or the right. One of the players who followed that course is Simon Philips, for many years on the Toto drum stool. Carter Beauford in the Dave Matthews Band is another. I asked Simon many years ago if he was left or right-handed, and he replied that he's a bit of both. He learned to play right-handed but subsequently taught himself to play some things left-handed. The benefit comes with being able to use the kit as a whole, without worrying whether you should be playing things the way every right-handed drummer plays them.
For keyboard players on stage, there was a time when squiffy-handers were bothered by the feeling that they were giving too much emphasis to the left-hand part. Rhodes and Hammond players would suffer the insistent bass player who repeatedly nagged about keeping out of their sonic zone: "It's getting too crowded down there!" With modern keyboards, however, zoning has shifted such problems into advantages for the ambidextrous on-stage left-hander who can play two things at once—not necessarily including a bass line—and potentially do so more capably than a right-hander.
The left-handed classical pianist Hélène Grimaud told Michael Roddy at Reuters: "The left hand is quite present in my playing, sometimes to the detriment of the right. So I guess everything that is an advantage is also potentially a disadvantage."
Staying in the classical world, picture an orchestra. You'll never see a left-hander among the violins, because that could cause chaos—not to say a lost eye or three. Orchestral violinists have any leftiness struck out before they get anywhere near a symphony stage. Violin players in the folk world are less restricted, and you'll see the occasional lefty, such as bluegrass fiddler Molly Kate.
One classical instrument that suits a leftwards inclination is the French horn, which Ellen Dinwiddie Smith plays in the Minnesota Orchestra. And she is left-handed. "The horn valves are fingered with the left hand, so as a left-handed person I had a slight advantage when I started compared to a right-handed person," Ellen tells me. "I feel most instruments require dexterity of both hands. And since I'm a strong lefty—the nuns at my elementary school tried to change my handedness preference, unsuccessfully—I'm certainly lucky that my band director led me to choose the horn."
In jazz, the saxophone (and other reeds and woodwinds) might well benefit from a gibble-fister's ambidexterity. Think about the way those hands work the keys. It's said that Charlie Parker was left-handed, and it's a quality that certainly did him no harm, at least musically.
Meanwhile, back in the rock-oriented world, left-handed guitarists and bassists have choices to make. Some accede to right-is-right, taking what might seem the "easy" route and playing a fully right-handed guitar in the right-handed fashion—although this can feel unnatural in the short-term. That's what Robert Fripp did, among quite a few others. Is it necessarily better that a guitar is played with the stronger hand doing the picking or strumming?
Some left-handed guitarists prefer to turn a right-hand guitar around to face the "wrong" way, without changing the layout of the strings (folk legend Elizabeth Cotten did so), or they might take a little more trouble and re-string the turned-around guitar (Jimi Hendrix, of course). Last, for the true left-handed approach to guitar, there is the custom, or at least special-order, fully left-hand guitar, with everything reversed (like Zacky Vengeance).
Paul McCartney told me his first guitar—a cheap Zenith that he acquired around 1957 before he switched to bass—posed a problem. "I realized this when I got the Zenith home, that it was right-handed and I was left-handed. I didn't know what you did about that. There were no rule books. Nobody talked about being left-handed."
He saw a photo of Slim Whitman and the penny dropped: You turn the thing around. Later, he got his famous lefty Hofner violin bass and discovered that left-handedness had an on-stage bonus with his band. "At the mic, singing with George, if I'd been right-handed I probably would have been sticking the bass into his stomach half the time." I rest my case (a genuine left-handed one).
About the author: Tony Bacon writes about musical instruments, musicians, and music. His books include Electric Guitars: Design & Invention and Paul McCartney: Bassmaster. Tony lives in Bristol, England. More info at tonybacon.co.uk.