Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Any left-handed pianist here? Advantages &disadvantages?

I think it may depend on the style of music you prefer to play. If you're doing more of a LH-chord RH-melody kind of piece (common in some method books and in lead sheet playing) then there is a chance it will be more challenging for your RH to really bring out the melody. However, in classical playing there are many difficult things for the LH to do, while being the accompaniment to the RH.

I'm a right-handed person and so Beethoven sonatas and some Chopin works have some really challenging LH parts. So, I don't think that left-handed pianists are at a disadvantage. Everyone has their own weaknesses to overcome.

There are many, many works written specifically for LH, by Brahms, Saint-Saëns, Scriabin, Godowsky, Bartók, Moszkowski, Alkan et al.....but hardly any written just for RH, so you have an advantage .

Probably the best and most well-known is this: http://youtu.be/KJTUUKAdZDU

I don't find in the general repertoire that it makes a bit of difference. Sensitivity must be developed in both hands. Often the melody is interchanged between hands.

I had a classmate who broke his right arm, aged about 16, he started to use his left to write and stayed using it even after his plaster cast was removed.

I was genetically left-handed, but was learnt to use my right hand to hold a spoon and a fork, or to write (I can write but my left hand, I just do not have the skill to do it fast and nicely).
I still cannot use a knife by the right hand and use my left hand for anything else - for example, my first reaction is always to use the left hand.

How it influences my playing? I definitely have little trouble playing polyphonic pieces with several voices, and can easily play moments where the left hand leads.
But I would prefer all these fast trills to be written for LH, not for the right (although I play them after practice) - I would prefer the LH party was ornamented
I spend a little bit more efforts to play fast by left hand than by right as well.

It is not scientific though, and just my IMO - as it could be just my skill set

But overall it was easier for me to learn piano than to my right-handed classmates who usually used one hand for most activities.

The US is probably only about 3 generations ahead of China in terms of left handed acceptance. I went to a US catholic school in the 1980s, and I recall of the older alumni and faculty told stories about how they were forced in their youth to adopt right-handedness when they noticed my left handedness.

Western languages, too, give evidence to the stigma attached to being left handed. The Latin word for "left" is "sinistra"- the origin, of course, of the word "sinister." The french word for "left" is "gauche", which basically means "uncouth" or "clumsy." The latin word for "right" is "dexter", from which the word "dextrous" comes. In other words, to be capable meant to be "dexter" or "right."

I am almost as left handed as can be. I write, eat, swing a bat, use scissors, use a computer mouse, use a broom (left hand on top), strike a match (left hand holds the match, right the box), play tennis, and do a whole host of other things in the standard left handed way. The only things I do right handed are the ones where the left handed option was not readily available in my youth. I play golf (hand me down clubs were only right handed), play guitar (borrowed guitar can't easily be restrung), and play piano (soprano by tradition is towards the right) in the "right handed" way.

However, I've never found it to be a limitation OR an advantage in piano to be left handed. I don't feel particularly adroit with my left hand compared to the right-handers I know- and tend, like most folks, to find complex passages a more difficult with the left than the right. I'm sure this is owing a right handed bias in practice caused by the fact that, in most music, the right hand is more "notey" or melodic than the left.

On these lines, I thought this concept was interesting- a left handed piano:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po2_PnH54TA

I have often though about taking an upright piano and adding a keyboard to the back of it, with a connecting linkage to the action. This piano could then be played right or left handed. Perhaps a neat idea for four handed playing as well...

Jurgen - That would be just too much inverted retrograde for us poor pianists to comprehend!

My cousin, born in 1932, was forced to write right handed. He developed a type of mirror writing. He also claimed that one ear grew more than the other. ??

He can write right handed, but it's a very childish script, bordering on printing.

FWIW, I had one left handed friend who quit piano lessons as a kid - she was very slow and awkward, could not coordinate the two hands, yet had a high IQ. I don't know any other left handed pianists.

My father in law did some PhD research on this subject. Lefties should have an advantage. Both groups have about equal coordination in their dominant hand and can perform dexterity tests in comparable amounts of time. But when it comes to the non-dominant hand, a lefty using his/her righty has much more dexterity than a righty using his/her lefty. (Which makes sense if you think about it, since it's kind of a right-handed person's world.)

I am a true lefty -- as I write, throw, and eat lefthanded. Especially chopsticks. I am of Chinese descent but I'm an American, so I wasn't forced to use my right hand. Which is good -- as a few of my lefthanded Uncles who were retrained to use their right hands also have stuttering problems. Re-routing brain circuits haphazardly sometimes can have it's consequences. I think in regards to piano, it's all about practice, as my right hand is more nimble than my left. That said, I do a couple of things righthanded mostly, including using scissors, casting a fishing rod, using a mouse, and cutting with a knife. I actually cook using it lefthanded and while cutting a steak I can use my right hand thus getting the pieces of meat into my mouth faster without having to switch hands back and forth.

I use a mouse righthanded probably because that's where it always was and I was too lazy to try to switch hands. It actually would make better sense to use the mouse with the left hand, so you could use the keypad with the right. One thing about cutting a steak -- I was told by my mother that manners required that you switch hands. I later have realized more than manners, people just can't use a knife with their non-dominant hand, thus necessitating switching back and forth.

Great topic!

Yep, dominant lefty here. I can golf right handed but that's about it. I feel like it's an advantage on the piano because I can play stride and boogie patterns fairly easy. However, since taking up piano, my right hand is faster and lighter. I guess that's from years of practice since piano playing really takes both hands. Oh, I've had both carpel tunnel surgeries and a right hand cubital tunnel operation. So I get RSS pretty easy. Not sure if there's a connection there.

Here's a test for you out there having a baby. put the infant on his/her back and watch which side it uses to get up, that will probably be the "side" hand they use. I'll agree with others, it was pretty difficult growing up a lefty. I was one of the last in my class to pass the penmanship test......lol. I would always smear the ink as I wrote. For you righty's out there, we lefty's always spot another lefty right off when they right. Funny how cool it is to see someone else as a lefty.........blob

Good topic!! I was only yesterday discussing this with a fellow pianist-violist, and she didn't there that lefties would have any trouble playing, altho she DID know of someone who had a left handed violin.

The only lefty piano student I know was very awkward and gave it up. She was a very high IQ type, but piano wasn't her bag.

I've been reading this thread with interest as my almost 4 yr old daughter is clearly a lefty. She's just started playing with a 5 fingers instead of the 'hunt and peck' method and sometimes needs reminding to use her right hand. She's not using her left hand at all yet except for one song that has a single low note. Her teacher seems to feel she's doing well but it can't be due to her left hand dominance just yet.

That would surely be a lot easier to do with a digital rather than acoustic.

Lefties in my class were told to write LHCP on their penmanship tests. (Left Hand Class Pupil). Now that cursive isn't taught, those letters are back there with buggy whips.