Musical Switch-Hitters

Are you right-handed or left-handed? And do you play your instrument in the “normal” way or reversed?

A recent discussion on the harplist got me musing about handedness in music. (If you play harp and are not on the list you can subscribe at: main+subscribe@harplist.groups.io)

Most harpists play with the harp on the right shoulder. This allows us to play the melody with the right hand and accompaniment with the left hand much like we would play the piano, with the right hand playing higher notes than the left hand.

But there are some harpists who play with the harp on the left shoulder and play melody with the left hand. There are various reasons why a harpist might choose to play “left-handed.”

1. In the music thanatology program “Chalice of Repose” started by Therese Schroeder-Sheker, the philosophy is that the harp is nearer the location of the heart when it is resting on the left shoulder.
2. Those who play cello hold the neck of the cello near the left shoulder, and play melody with left hand rather than right, so a cellist may find it more natural this way (I know one in particular!). And likewise, a guitarist might feel more at home with the left hand on melody.
3. Some wire harp players believe this is historically more accurate, and site drawings and paintings that depict harpers holding the harp on the left shoulder. This has been debated since some of the drawings may have been printed from woodcuts that would then be reversed from the carving. And if artists’ renditions are expected to be accurate depictions, then this is how we should hold the harp: 

So the interesting thing is that to play a lever harp on the left shoulder, either you’ll have all the levers on the side of the harp that you can’t see, making it awkward to adjust for accidentals, or you would need to have a harp maker build one with levers on the opposite side. In that case, the harpist would have a difficult time playing on someone else’s harp…

This is a similar issue that left-handed guitarists deal with – if they re-string the instrument so that the strings are reversed from the standard guitar, they can only play that instrument, and not borrow someone else’s at a party.

I played in a folk group in the early 1970’s with a guy (Joe Sharino – excellent musician and stellar human being, by the way) who played left-handed on a standard guitar – even though he was right-handed for everything else. He flipped the guitar over so he could play chords and leads with the right hand and strum with the left.

If you flip a standard guitar over, what happens is that the lowest pitch string is at the bottom rather than the top, so strumming downward would be going from high to low strings instead of low to high. And fingerstyle playing where thumb plays bass notes would be impossible.

Joe would strum up for his down beats and down for his up beats. It was really unnerving at first to play with him – it looked like he was a half a beat behind or ahead. Kind of like when you play along with people on mute in Zoom… In addition, the formation of the chords were completely backwards, so watching him for chords took an additional mental calculation to see the chord.

I got used to it though, and the advantage he had was that he could pick up any guitar, flip it over, and play in his way -- and make great music! Here’s Joe in 1976:

So, who says which hand is correct? If you play piano, you might think that logically, the right hand does the finer motor movements in playing the melody, while the left hand plays larger reaches with patterns like “root five octave” as accompaniment. So it would make sense to play harp this way as well. But what if you are left-handed and want to play the finer motor movements with your dominant hand?

And if you play guitar, or mandolin, or violin, or any similar instrument, you are used to playing melodically with the left hand and either strumming or bowing or fingerpicking with the right hand. So is the standard guitar, violin, etc., a left-handed instrument? Of course, they can be built or strung in reverse, but I’ve never seen a left-handed piano with keys going up to the left instead of the right. Hmm…

Here’s an interesting piece to the puzzle:

The two hemispheres in your brain are connected by a thick bundle of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum that ensures both sides of the brain can communicate and send signals to each other.

And in a study:

Part of the corpus callosum connecting the two brain hemispheres was indeed larger in musicians. The team also found that musicians' brains seemed to fire more symmetrically when they listened to music – the activity in the left and right hemispheres was a much closer match than that of the non-musicians.

So, even though we may be still primarily right or left-handed (or for some, ambidextrous), our musical training enhances the use of both hemispheres. I find this fascinating since I play several instruments in their “standard” configuration. So, even though I am right-handed for writing, eating, catching a ball, etc., I play piano and harp “right-handed” and violin, guitar, mandolin, etc. “left-handed.” Does that make me ambidextrous? And I know I’m not the only one who plays “ambidextrously” – if you play both piano and guitar, you are a musical switch-hitter by playing the melody either with right hand or with left hand.

My musings have brought me to the conclusion that right or left hand does not equate to right or wrong way. And that any musical instrument you learn is good for enhancing the corpus callosum, and worth pursuing no matter which way you want to play.

May you spend many joyous hours in your musical pursuits!

--Verlene