At the risk of being shot down as a newbie please could you help me with a simple question I could not find the answer to in the search.
With a wooden flute can you play it both left and right handed? Are there some that you could?
The reason I ask is that of course I’m a cuddywifter but have the chance to buy a flute. It’s a big investment - would I be able to play it?
Sorry if this is blindingly obvious you all. I thank you for your patience in advance.
Why should anyone want to shoot?
I think it would be wise to ask the maker, if that is possible, if he cut the embouchure for both left and right sided use. I am not sure if some makers do that always, or only on request. Would be nice to know which flute makers bother to do this always.
(I assume you talk about six hole flutes without keys and with inline finger holes. For any other flute, with keys or a thumbhole, or with offset finger holes, it becomes obvious if it is a left or right player.)
One other obvious thing to consider, I suppose, is which way you want to play. I’m right-handed myself, so, for me at any rate, the question doesn’t arise. But I understand that there are plenty of otherwise left-handed people who play the flute with the body pointing to the right (ie right-handed fashion). (I think there are even a few right-handers who play flute left-handed, though why is beyond me.)
Also, I wonder if it makes a difference if you already play whistle (as you do, I believe). Because, presumably, if you play flute left-handed style, you’re going to be using your hands the other way round to the way most people play whistle, which might be confusing for you. Unless, of course, you already play whistle with your right hand on top.
To be ambidextrous and play the flute both left and right sided would be amazingly good for the body posture, to balance neck and shoulder stress etc., I think.
Oh, and for the mind!
benhall.1 makes a gooid point. I am instistently lefthanded on instruments such as guitar and bowed string instruments (the latter of which I really don’t play, but even so!), but I wouldn’t think of holding a flute “the wrong way around” – yeah, it’s a funny thing. So check with yourself that your preference is really not accidentally the common one.
As for the rest, if you don’t have keys, the important thing is the embouchure hole. I for one haven’t as of yet been able to find out what would be asymmetric on these, especially if there is no lip plate, but that is what you want to check.
Yup. I practise the whistle left-handed from time to time. That trains the brain big time. Playing flute left-handed is a huge pain in the a… - I’m probably too impaired by playing right-handed all the time… 
Regarding embouchures, I’m pretty sure that Tom Aebi cuts a two-way embouchure by request, at least that’s what he did a few years ago with a friend’s fully keyed lefty D/Eb Rudall set (even though one might ask why this has been done with a keyed flute…anyway, works nicely).
Most embouchures are asymettrical, not because the maker is too lazy to “cut it both ways”, but because that is the way the best embouchures are. I’ve never encountered a flute that played equally well left and right, even excluding the differences in holding them. Maybe they do exist? 
There is a lot of magic in embouchure holes - they are not just simple cylindrical holes, maybe hollowed out a bit under one edge to change the angle. Ten supposedly identical flutes from the same maker (usually) still display significant differences when you play them.
I know someone - a very very good flute & whistle player - who plays whistle with R hand on top (“L-handed”) and flute “R-handed”. Quite bizarre to watch her switch instruments mid-set! I think she is R-handed but, as quite a few do regardless of their hemispherical dominance, originally picked up whistle with R on top but then learned flute the “orthodox” way. Of course, L-handers almost always have to learn Bohm flute “R-handed” as there are/have been very very few (and not cheap!) reverse-engineered Bohm flutes made. It doesn’t usually seem to be a problem for them! I’d say, unless you have already reached a fair degree of competence with R-hand on top on whistle, try to learn flute the orthodox way around. This is not an issue where the cerebral dominance thing is actually especially strong (compared with, say, use of one-handed tools like pens, hammers etc.); it is more a question of acquired habit.
Others have already made the relevant points about embouchure cut, etc.
Thanks everyone. Great info as ever.
I think I need to try a flute for a while to see just what my brain decides.
I would say that the flute is going to feel uncomfortable and take adjustments either way. Unlike a pencil, both hands are used and so if you haven’t started any habits I would think it would be best to start right handed. Later if you want keys, this will give you more options and make it easier to buy and sell a flute. To me it is like cars, they don’t switch peddles for handedness.
Of course, there is always the end blown flutes…
try practising on the whistle, holding it transverse and blowing across the blade. It’s only a whisper but it might give a feel for what your brain and hands are comfortable with (good way to practice silent too!).
I don’t really see it as left handed, more like a different way around. It wouldn’t make any difference on the whistle and I know one whistle teacher who plays ‘left on top’ but who demonstrated visually to a kids beginner class using ‘right on top’ because she thought they found it easier to copy the fingers back to her (mirror image).
There’s an awful lot of people who play trad flute sticking out to the left rather than the right, including some top players (like Dee Havlin - who also plays right hand top on whistle).
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4144725&l=91409aaf51&id=834692505
I guess the idea of ‘left handedness’ in flute comes from the requirements of mass manufacture, orchestral and band playing (where you don’t want flutes poking in opposite directions)? Folk musicians more often just pick up instruments by osmosis and experiment. Whatever works I guess.
It’s true that if you want to use keys you’ll have a bigger choice of flutes if you play left hand on top (but you can always take a couple of keys off and block up the holes if they get in the way ).
Funny but as I was playing my flute last night it suddenly occurred to me that my left hand works harder than my right. It’s always touching the holes (except for c#). My right hand sometimes isn’t doing anything and gets to take a little rest. So it seems like right out of the box the flute favors the left-handed.
Actually, I think the flute doesn’t favor any handedness at all. It’s more like typing. Something you do with both hands. The only reason I’m aware of that people get lefty flutes is because they started playing it turned the wrong way and got used to it.
I’m a right-handed person who accidently taught myself to play the whistle left-handed, and then the simple flute left-handed. I didn’t even know this until I was given a silver flute (by a Nun!) A person just can’t hold and play one of those things left-handed. It took me around a year before I could hold it right-handed without pain. I can now play the simple flute left or right-handed and do so regularly depending on where I’m sitting and where I want to look. I use a full piper’s grip to play left handed and more of a silver flute grip to play right handed. If I’m playing in public, I prefer to play left-handed. I can tell the musicians who are watching when I play a silver flute right-handed and switch. I’m amazed it works in my brain for the flute because I play whistles and recorders right-handed with great difficulty and only to show people that it’s not something that I can do.
Cool stories and so the opposite of what you get when you ask in a classical violin forum about the options for playing left-handed 
I was wondering if anybody (makers perhaps?) could tell what they do to an embouchure hole that makes it asymmeric. And what they do to it overall, and why. Not asking for trade secrets, just the insights you feel OK to share
How about Seamus Egan. I believe he plays flute right handed and whistle with his hands the other way. Not sure if that’s quite right. but I do know he plays opposite with each.
This has sort of puzzled me as well. I play flute and whistle right-handed. But, like you, if I were to pick-up a bowed instrument or a guitar, then I’d want to play left-handed! I write left-handed, but play most sports right-handed (tennis, golf etc). I’d love to know what all this means (apart from me being slightly odd ).
Ian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambidextrous
left handed people don’t have a lot of options 
Since flute playing requires an equal level of skill in both hands, I see no real advantage in holding the flute off to the right for right-handed people and off to the left for left-handed people, but, of course, as with many other things I may be wrong about this. I don’t think that it is like holding a baseball bat. Like other instruments that require advanced skill levels in both hands, such as drums, piano, flute players must learn ambidexterity. As a right-handed person, trying to hole the flute off to the left seems very ackward to me now since I have years of experience holding the flute to the right. However, holding the flute and depressing the keys with both hands seemed very ackward when I first tried doing it, even when I started holding it to the right. I wonder if I would have been equally successful if my first efforts at holding the flute were what is considered left handed. Of course, the Boehm flute that I started on was not available at a reasonable cost, except as a right hand flute, so I couldn’t have tried the experiment, even if I had wanted to.
Not totally relivant, but interesting anyway, consider the violin. Violins are generally held on the left side of the body. I suppose that this is so because the right bowing hand is seen as requiring the most skill and certainly the most motion. However, this left-side violin position is the same as the left-hand flute position. The side of the body that the instrument is held does not seem to be the deciding factor here; it is the skill level of each hand. As I mentioned before, the skill level of the hands is the same in the flute, so the side of the body that the instrument is held should not be very significant, in my opinion.
With regard to the design of embouchure holes for simple system flutes, I can’t speak for other makers, but I see no reason why a universal embouchure (equally playable either right or left-handed) could not be offered, if requested. I find myself cutting this type of embouchure for my pvc flutes, although, it goes without saying that the finger holes need to be inline for a flute to be easily playable either right and left-handed.
Whistle LH, 0:17, 2:28; Guitar RH 4:16
Flute, RH:
