Any left-handed pianist here? Advantages &disadvantages?

I was born left-handed, even to this day, my left hand is bigger than right, about 0.5cm longer each finger, also stronger.

But I found playing piano as a lefty is really an advantage. I could play left-handed excercises at ease, chopin's revolution etude is my favorite as my left hand flying down the passage with little difficulty.

My right hand is also very strong, due to 30 years of forced training (In China, they harshly correct left hander at school, so I was forced to write, using chop sticks, cissor with right hand), now it has same dexterity as left hand, and only a little bit weaker in terms of strength, only a little bit, not affecting my playing at all. I think I am now truly ambidextrous, haha.

What's your opinions over left-handness at playing piano? as I am aware in US/CAN they don't force left-hand children to correct and as a result lefties might have weaker right hand here and maybe it affects your playing? any thoughts?

I don't feel it has hindered or effected me in anyway - I write and eat with my left, however I throw a ball, play golf/basketball/sport etc etc right handed.

I am the opposite of you, I write, eat(chopstick) with right hand due to school forced correction, other than those, I kick, throw, playing golf, using a mouse all with my left hand/foot, but my right hand can do those things equally well without a problem, despite I prefer my left hand. My right hand's only problem is its 0.5cm shortness, and a tiny tiny bit of weakness.

See I prefer my right hand to do anything apart from eat and write - so most would say that I'm left handed, but I consider myself to be ambidextrous. I can write with my right hand, but takes me a lot longer and looks like I ought to have a PHD in medicine.

I am a lot more coordinated with my right hand, but I'm more controlled with the left - I'm so strange! haha

You are no hardcore lefty! You don't belong to us, haha.

Haha - but I write with the left hand! let me be one of youuuuu!

I'm also one of those freaks who write and eat left handed but play ball right handed. I consider myself somewhat ambidextrous, but I can't play piano very well with either of my hands

I am glad they no longer force us lefties to write with right hand anymore in China, my nephew now write with left hand without being corrected by teacher like I used to be treated (teachers used harsh words to describe you as "weirdo", "rebel", since left-handness was considered very bad back in China). There's tools such as left-handed scissor available to public, unlike my old days, NO left handed scissors available, at least not in old days China.

I also find it's more convenient to live in 21st century as I no longer am required to write up documents with right hand, all done on computer with a qwerty keyboard which was accidentally designed to favor us lefties. Driving is also a breeze, especially for a stick shift, I steer with my dominate hand!

ETA: the only inconvenience/annoyance I've still yet to overcome is the available drilling tools on the market, although I feel comfortable enough to drill with my right hand, I'd still prefer a driller designed to suite left hand, yet CrappyTire doesn't sell any of them.

I also grew up under the 'not allowed to use your left hand' law. My mother said we all reached with our left but she insisted on our using the right hand. I often have right-handed students asking me if left-handed students have it easier at the piano. Funny thing is I never know if a student I have is left or right until they use a pencil. So it seems what really matters is practice.

rada

Your mother must be Chinese, haha.

Although I agree with practice makes perfection, but the dominance does affect people's playing, at least mine.

I can play those very difficult left handed etudes like a breeze, and was unware of it until I see right handed struggling with them.

Haha - but I write with the left hand! let me be one of youuuuu! [/quote]

You can't! It's genetic, this gene runs through my family, haha.

I am left-handed but not Chinese so I grew up doing most everything but playing video games left-handed.

I can't say it's been much of a thing one way or the other. If anything, my instructor complains that I play the LH too loudly and when I told him I'm left-handed he went "ohhhhhhhhh". I guess left hand melodies are a little easier but in the grand scheme of things I don't think it's made much difference in anything.

Being left-handed hasn't proved to be a problem in playing the piano. For example in my youth I was forced to play the violin as well as do other activities right handed. things were a bit different when I was growing up, there was a strong bias against left handers in the U.S., in fact there still is but not to the same degree as other parts of the world.

I play the guitar left handed so that gave me an advantage as my right hand is used to pressing down the strings on the fretboard so that is easily transferable to pressing down keys on a piano.

IMHO, probably the strongest advantage of the left handed pianst is because they've been forced to adapt to the right handed world they tend to be more ambidexous so when performing an activity where both hands are necessary the task isn't as daunting as say for a person who is used to using only their right hand.

DAVID

I bet you didn't receive as much as negativity from school as I did.

Chinese culture hates left-hand, the word "left" means literally bad, off-beat.

You would get your hands slapped hard by teacher if using left hand. Your parents would beat you if discovered using chopstick with wrong hand. P.E. teacher literally corrects your jumping foot, forcing you to throw basket ball with right hand . Scissors in China used to be right-hand only. Left-handers were not allowed in the army.

I grew up adapting to this right-hand world in a hard way. Damn, I wish one day I could force some right-hander going through the same ordeal I had.

I am left handed. I did organ as a kid and got used to pounding chords out with my left hand. I have trouble playing left hand softly (though I think that's getting better). For piano I feel my right hand is stronger and has more control. I don't feel being left handed gives me any advantage/disadvantage relative to piano.

But like many others I use my right hand for some things(throwing a ball, using a mouse, scissors) and my left for others (writing, eating,) so one hand is not entirely dominant. Interesting question to ponder though!

I found lots of people refer to themselves lefties aint' true are, if you still prefer do lots of things with right hand.

A hardcore left-hander such as myself is totally genetic, it runs through my paternal family. If you developed your left hand later in life, you totally ain't a lefty at all, for eg, if you lost your right hand but developed marvelous skills with left hand, genetically, you are still a right hander. We born with total dominating left-hand, my left side has bigger bones, longer arm, bigger hand, bigger almost everything, without forcing using right hand, my right can't do much thing as I presumed, despite I developed to be an ambidextrous later in my life.

I also find that true lefty is very rare among populations.

Back in the sixties, oh heck yes. I remember my second grade teacher tying my left hand behind my back so I wouldn't use it.

My parents were 2nd Gen Chinese Americans but that didn't make it any easier.

I probably can top you horror story to horror story but I try not to dwell on the past as you can't change what happened but hopefully you can help ensure the future is better.

DAVID

In your case, I doubt your lH is being too lound. It probably due to right hand doesn't have a effective way controlling sound aptitude. That seems to occur when you weren't forced to learn to be ambidextrous as I were, now your right hand is as weak as those right-hander's LH, and unfortunately, most musics written with main melody played by RH.

Jian, if you ever heard me play you'd quickly agree that "too loudly" describes my playing in a nutshell. Nothing terrifies me more than the word "leggiero"...

I'm a lefty and I think my left hand is a little better than my right, but music is so skewed to the right with the melody being in the right hand, a pianist is forced to develop his or her right hand. As for ambidexterity, I eat and write left handed, play ping pong left handed, but I play baseball right handed and bowl right handed. I can't seem to make up my mind. I play tennis with both hands which gives me a few more inches reach. My high school coach yelled at me to pick a hand. I can only serve with my right hand though, since it is a motion very similar to throwing a ball.

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!