I was just wondering if strings teachers can tell if their pupils are left or right handed by their strengths and weaknesses when they start out.

Does it make any difference?

I'm sure it all evens out in the end.

I'm left handed and found I had a lot of problems with bow shake to begin with but was quite good at finding the right notes with my left hand.

You missed out option 4: Not hugely co-ordinated using either hand.

At least with the violin (unlike the piano) the activities of the two hands are widely differing, so can't mix up which hand has to do which action at any one time. The drawback is when both hands have an action and the two actions have to be done simultaneiously....

Hey I had the same problem too.My right hand was so weak and I cant even control the bow but not anymore.I practice hard and now my right hand is okay.I also had complications with my right hand pinky finger.I cant make a circle but the problem is solved cos I put long eraser between my pinky finger and the finger next to the pinky finger.It really works ...


Both hands are important.

For me, I've never had trouble finding notes and shifting with my LH. That's actually the easier bit about violin playing. Getting the bowing right is much harder.

And I'm right-handed.

This is so true, and I always find that teaching left-handers is full of pitfalls for this reason. I make a point of always asking when taking on new students.

I've always found left-handers to be more hard work, but particularly with the bowing arm. Also, for the first few weeks they always get confused and try to put the violin on the wrong shoulder - it's instinctive, seemingly.

The reason for the bowing arm problem is that you really do need to bow with your stronger, more coordinated arm. It must be the same with using a guitar pick, which is why the vast majority of left-handed guitarists play the guitar the other way round, ie Paul McCartney. I think it's a real shame violinists can't really do the same thing, but it would mean a different chin-rest, the sound post on the other side, strings the other way round and it would be very confusing for the teacher! Also if they joined an orchestra you'd have the left-hander bowing the other way, which would look a bit odd and is probably the main reason they're expected to play the wrong way round (for them).

Having said all that I have a new left-handed pupil who is making the most amazing progress; however, she does practise very diligently!

Yes I do think teachers can tell which is the dominant hand to a certain degree. I said dominant because even though left handers have their left hand as their dominant hand and right handers vice versa, it's not always the case . My teacher could tell I was left handed because my left hand is progressing at a faster rate than my right and I do have bowing problems. SIGHHHH... *grin* So what do ambidextrous people have problems with?

I can use both hands and can write well with both hands although my right hand is definately better

I have wondered about left handed players, and how they manage. I don't understand why a violin can't be set up "backwards" for a left handed player as they a symetrical, and most people only play their own violin. It would only have to be done once and then the left handed player could learn in the way that is easier for them. Seems a bit discriminatory to me that they have to conform to the right handed norm. (I am right handed anyway, but I have noticed my left handed son plays the guitar right handed.)

I know a left handed violist who has to have the strings put back to front. (ADGC rather than CGDA).
He's actually really very good as well in all fairness!

I'm obviously left handed as I started this.

To be honest I've not really found it a problem but this is possbily because I've messed around with guitars and a bass (I wouldn't say I play them) but these were right handed and I've kind of got used to them.

Also as a kid I was forced to do some things right handed (thanks to a draconian dinner lady) so I've probably ended up a bit ambi. I am not completely left handed. I write with my left hand and do most other things with my right

I play in a youth orchestra, and nearly a third of us are lefties - it should only be about 10%!

If you start learning right-handed, you don't notice the difference really. Violin, guitar... various things. It's like eating with a knife and fork right-handedly.

Violins are not symetrical on the inside. The E string is normally over the soundpost and the the G string is normally over the bass bar. If you strung it the opposite way around, the sound should be radically different.

I hope you'll forgive a pianist joining in a string thread, but I think this topic is piano relevant as well - I find that left handers often have completely different ways of learning, now these are very general observations and doesn't apply to all, but they are certain characteristics that I've noticed from time to time.

1. They prefer the flat scales to the sharp ones (maybe the left hand side of the brain is dominant)
2. They love Bass melodies with a RH harmony.
3. Often have to nag a lot re hand shapes, but more a twisted hand rather than the general collapsed fingers that everyone does.
4. Really weird one, many of my Left handers have had a phenominal memory and will memorise the hands individually starting with the bass. Not that I don't have right handers with good memory, but I have never had a right hander who has naturally isolated the bass line to memorise, unless I've asked them to as part of a memory exercise.
5. Coordination is never a specific problem but balance of hands is.

Now I'm sure people will now join in with the many exceptions to the rule, this is by no means a scientific study, and can probably be as easily discounted as my theory that people who like Marmite don't like peanut butter. But I find the different ways that beginners learn fascinating and there are some definite differences depending on which is the dominant hand.

Son Viohazard approached keyboard in a way that I've heard others say is common among left-handers - first of all, play melody in left-hand. When asked to play with both hands, would add RH harmony....told to play the harmony in the bass and melody in the treble, he simply crossed his hands and continued to use his dominant LH for melody in treble . I thought he was too young to be talked out of it, so he started violin rather than piano at that point (preschool).

Certainly found LH very easy (initially) with violin, rarely looked at the fingerboard, has not found vibrato overwhelmingly difficult, but took a long time to achieve a good bow grip and adequate control over the bow. Also took a while to get bow-stroke and LH finger-movement perfectly coordinated.

I've heard people say that LH violinists sometimes have trouble if they are also strongly "left-eyed" as normal violin-playing stance means that your right eye is better placed for reading music.

It took 2-3 weeks for his bowing to regain strength and stability after he was sick recently, made me wonder if it would have taken that long if he had been right-handed...

1. no, I prefer sharp scales (possibly because I learnt them on the violin first).
2. yes and I have issues with "balancing" and not having a horrible clumpy left hand.
3. not that I've noticed for me personally.
4. Yes - wouldn't have called it phenomenal myself but I do memorise hands individually - think I usually start with RH though. I've also often wondered if my ability to memorise comes from a necessity to look at my hands more than anything else, but this seems unlikely to be a specific left-handers' problem.
5. YES!

Violin I've never had a problem with although of course I don't know what it's like to play it right-handed. Come to think of it, specific bow techniques like up-bow staccato and martelé may have taken me a bit longer than is standard to pick up.

Looking at the results of the poll, many more of us are left-handers than "should" be statistically - or maybe left handers are just more likely to open this thread but from Scurra's comment about her youth orchestra it sounds like there might be something in it.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that the fingering is done with the left hand for left handers, if anything I would say it is the right-handers who are doing it wrong. It wasn't a problem for me to be doing the more dextrous (or should that be sinistrous?!) part with the more co-ordinate fingers, when the other hand was more reliant on elbow and wrist movement rather than control of individula fingers. Similarly with eating, with a knife and fork the right hander aims at their face with their less good hand, but once they are just using a spoon on its own they put it in their right hand, so why don't they use the fork in their right hand?

Two thirds of our further maths set at school was left handed, and half was chinese!

I've never yet taught a left-handed person the violin. I'm sure it will happen at some point though.

I'm rather ambidextrous, having naturally picked up a pencil and written with my left hand as a child, but was forced to become right-handed by parents and teachers. By the time I took up the violin my right hand dominated with things like writing, so it's never occured to me whether had I remained left-handed if it would have affected my own violin playing.

I'm still able to write with my left hand, although it's not something I make a habit of doing for everyday things.