I have been working on my chromatic scale (as I mentioned in one of my other posts) and haven’t been able to figure out why it’s so hard. Then I noticed pictures of online players and noticed they were holding the flute with their right hand on the bottom notes. WOW, I hold it the opposite way!
I’ve been playing the whistle since I was 8 this way. Right hand on top. I have been playing the flute for around 4 years this way too! So I developed some dexterity.
I tried flipping the flute around and I sound like a preschooler. It’s harder to maintain a flute position to keep the tone smooth. I can’t do any ornamentation unless the tempo is -120. It feels so weird. It would be like asking me to play the piano with my hands crossed.
What should I do? I guess I’ll never play chromatically if I keep playing left handed unless I have a special flute built? Or should I 'man up" and start over from square 1, learning how to hold the flute right handed?
Well, if you shift hands to a standard position,
the brain will catch on and shift what you already
know, but it will take a few weeks or more. You won’t
sound like a preschooler for long, though of course
it will be frustrating initially. And you had better
do it on whistle too.
The question is whether it’s worth it. People do
play lefty and there are keyed flutes made
to suit them, but it’s a lot easier to get flutes
for the standard position. Also embouchure
holes appear to often be cut for standard
position too, so even keyless you may
need a special flute.
Plenty of top-level trad players who play leftie, not necessarily because they are actually left-handed - some, just like you, simply got started that way and are stuck with it. If you want to play a fully chromatic keyed flute, then yes, you do have some extra problems. There are very few antique keyed flutes built that way, so you are really looking at the modern makers only, and they may charge a small premium for building “back to front” from the norm/main part of their production, and second hand leftie instruments also command a premium for rarity value. Cathal McConnell famously has always played a right-handed 8-key flute leftie, using some at least of the keys, but it isn’t really a recommended or entirely satisfactory option. A baroque traverso or something based thereon offers chromatic cross fingering with just the one Eb key, can be played either handed, and is a beautiful thing in its own right, but won’t satisfactorily make an ITM sound. You can play ITM on it and it will sound lovely, but it won’t sound like Matt Molloy or Kevin Crawford or whoever.
Bottom line - if you can change hands and have the patience and application to do so and rebuild your playing, you might be glad of it afterwards, but it isn’t really necessary - just start saving for that high-end bespoke 8-key leftie flute!
That’s Catherine McEvoy, lefty + queen of fluting.
A few of us on the boards (Henke and some others) play lefty. Other than getting ahold of keyed flute, there’s really no reason not to.
I was able to get a new keyed flute from a good maker without too much trouble, so it can be done. But I’d suggest trying righty for a few weeks, and if it absolutely doesn’t feel natural by then, go lefty. But I think you’ll be fine either way.
Do you think you might ever want to play uilleann pipes?
If so it would probably be easier in the long run to go righty now. I’ve seen lefty sets but I believe they are a lot more difficult to get than a lefthanded flute.
A flute-making friend of mine who has spent many months observing flute players throughout Ireland reckons that 40 percent of Irish flute players play left-handed. I don’t know if I’d estimate quite that high, but it’s true that there are many, many left-handed flute players in Ireland, more so than I’ve seen anywhere else.
Funny, until I saw Peter’s photo I didn’t realize that Tara Diamond played leftie too! She is indeed another Queen of the Flutes, I have cried listening to her playing, her settings are so beautiful and full of heart.
When you said you play the flute “backward” I assumed you meant you were blowing into the bottom hole instead of the embouchure hole
As for the pipes, I don’t think it’s impossible to find a lefty set, probably harder than to find flutes set up that way, but after all Willie Clancy played lefty so there’s a pretty important precedent there.
Anthony Baines, in Woodwind Instruments and their History, 1st Ed 1957, observed of the 8-key flute: “This flute is still regularly to be seen in use in Irish country-dance bands - usually a family heirloom, played left-handed with the keys plugged up.”
Tony was the Curator of the Bate collection (Oxford) when I visited there in 1974. He was also an enthusiast for the bagpipe and compiled a very good monograph on that topic. A more recent Bate Curator, the recently deceased Helene La Rue, was also a Northumbrian Small Piper. Clearly there are hazards endemic to every profession.
“Playing backward” and “playing left-handed” may not be the same thing.
Igobarefoot mentioned that he has his right hand on top when he plays the whistle. This whistle fingering would definately be backwards. But what if he uses the same hand position as he does when he holds the whistle, yet holds the flute out to his right. Now that, I maintain, is true backwards playing. I tried it. It’s a little stretch for the left arm, but doable, I suppose, if you have a backwards orientation. Actually, the left-arm extension playing this way is no more than that required to play an alto flute with a straight headjoint.
i have always used this idea when playing, even on the silver flute, because i have a hitchhiker’s thumb, which makes it very difficult and uncomfortable for me to rest my right hand thumb on the bottom, like most classical players do.
do not despair. it will not be too difficult. play slowly, and pay attention to your fingers, mouth, and posture. in a few months or weeks it will go away.
learning it opposite hand cant be as difficult as it was to learn the flute in the first place–surely you sounded worse than you sound righty now than when you started lefty in the first place! i bet you couldnt even make a single note the first time you put a flute to your face–none of us could.
i play the concertina, and have learned many fingering systems. at first it is difficult to play it as if it were a one row melodeon, for example, but after a while the pattern becomes engrained in your head. likewise, i am sure you remember first learning how to transpose in jazz or classical music. you must have sounded horrible! now i bet you it is effortless, and you play equally well in any key.
This reminds me: when I used to sell flutes at the “Uncommon Market” at the Seattle Folklife Festival, I would repeatedly get asked two questions for which I had somewhat rude answers if appropriate, especially for the latter question.
I made Matt Molloy’s low combo at the same time as I made Garry Shannon’s. Garry plays left handed, though he said that he is right handed, I recall. Just learned flute left handed. It was interesting to make a pair of “mirror image” flutes. Steve Cooper in Austin is also another left handed player.
Yes I can. I usually tune up the bodies right handed even with the holed offset opposite fron what I am used to, and then only deal with the voicing left handed, and test it. Am about to make it a little easier and made a special geadjoint adapter so I can plug the headjoint in backwards so that “downhill” is temporarily through the cap end.
