How many of you play with your right hand below your left hand and how many are the reverse? I am right handed, but play with my left hand below my right. Is this generally considered backwards? Is there any general correlation between right or left handedness and how you hold the whistle? I know, generally, people are told to hold the bottom of the whistle with their right hand. I personally don’t see how it makes any difference one way or the other. Just curious as to how other people play.
me is like smeagol.
i remember, the very first time i had a whistle in my hands, genD, it didn’t matter if my right or left hand was on top, both felt wrong.
Right hand at the bottom is best if you also want to play anything else such as the flute, otherwise it doesn’t really matter. Even the “3 & 3” rule isn’t essential. I know an excellent whistle player who uses four fingers of his left hand and two of his right.
I started playing left handed like you, and have kept it up. I play the flute now as well, and really enjoy playing backwards - It really makes people scratch their heads as they try to figure out why I look so different then what they’re used to. The best is when Boehm flute players ask, “Do all Irish flute players play like that?”
One of the neatest times, though, was when this summer I was down at Oberlin playing a bit of baroque flute, but still left handed, and when we did our concert there were two flutes in our group, so we flanked the soprano and both faced opposite dirrections. I can only immagine what the audience must have been thinking…
Back on topic, I actually alternated when I first started playing. But then I heard somewhere that left over right was the right way to play so I forced myself to stick with that. Occasionally just for fun I try to reverse it, end up messing up really bad because I’m just so used to playing right handed.
Hmmm, never tried playing the flute backwards. Must teach myself to do that and throw off the others I play with…
When I first picked up the whistle, I had a fingering chart, but no instruction. It seemed like the upper hand did more work (with c and c-natural) so I put my more dextrous hand up there.
Since i do my cuts in the Ochs-tutor reccommended style (cutting with C and A notes) most of my ornamentation is also done on the upper hand. Since you can get ‘left handed’ flutes, I don’t see it as a big deal, though it certainly makes it harder to aqcuire flutes second-hand, if you ever want to go that route.
When I was playing in Houston, it was just assumed that whistlers would “grow up” into flute players (heh), so I was often given advice to switch my grip. After nearly 10 years of whistling, I only have a passing curiosity in the flute, and still have a strong desire to improve my whistling, so I’m not concerned.
right on bottom, its hard getting left hand saxophones and trying to find a keyed flute for a south paw may be a bit more difficult than a regular, sorry right handed (I don’t think its interchangeable …?)
For a typical wooden Irish flute, is there something about the emboucher (sp?) that makes it hard to play “lefthanded”? Seems to me, you would just flip it around ???
I never even thought about it - I started out playing tinwhistle left-hand-on-top.
Of course, since I’ve had at least some formal training on both recorder and saxophone (both of which pretty much require left-hand-on-top), I was pretty set in my ways.
At this point, I woudn’t switch to play like Mary “right-hand-on-top” Bergin unless you could convince me I’d sound like Mary Bergin.
More seriously - I don’t think it really matters, for tinwhistle. It may matter, mildly, for keyless flute, but there are quite a few good left-handed players out there. If you plan to go on to play a keyed flute or the pipes, it starts to matter a lot - you’ll either need to switch or special-order a left-handed model.
Unless you’re so strongly left-handed it’s vastly difficult to play left-hand-on-top, I can’t see why you’d not want to start out in the more common orientation. But if you’re already a good player, I can’t see any particular reason to switch, either.
Righty, left hand on top, but I also come from a bassoon background, and that thing just would not work if you played with the opposite hands. But I think both hands do about an equal amount of work so it shouldn’t be hard for either dominance.
When I first got my whistle (Gen D) I played with the right hand at the top but some it felt wierd. Then when looking through some guides I saw that the left hand was supposed to be above the right and it felt so much better.
I’m a lefty…and play with the left hand on top. I’ve been playing clarinet for 20 years so playing with the right hand on top would throw me for a loop…and as others said, if you want to play flute, you usually have to have the left hand on top. Of course, you could play like Seamus Egan…left hand on top on flute, right hand on top on whistles. How DOES someone wrap their mind around THAT? I’d be lost…lol
Generally speaking the right hand connects with the left hemisphere of the brain which is primarily concerned with logic, mathematics and the language centers. The left hand connects with the right brain hemisphere which deals with the more intuitive, artistic areas , henceforth the right hand needs to be on top if you use sheet music and the opposite is true if you play by ear. You see the left hand needs to be engaged in a higher level of consciousness than it’s more calculated cousin the right, who’s delight is in the lower frequency pursuits. or…ummm well Good people play it the “Normal” way and Bad people play the way I don’t. :roll:
Having started out long ago as a flute player, I had to have left “up” (closer to head) and right “down” (farther from head)… so it followed naturally when I took up the whistle.
I don’t see how it is any advantage or disadvantage otherwise… except that most instruction I’ve seen assumes left top and right bottom… I’ve seen and heard players with both holds.
I think it’s a “whatever works for you” type of thing… although I’m sure there is a school of thought that says otherwise…
I join the ranks of clarinetists who play the “normal” way. But sometimes, when I’m feeling that I need an extra workout, I switch. Kind of like trying to write a letter by holding the pen in your toes. It comes out barely legible, but you sure have a good time trying. Or like playing with the sheet music upside down. Excellent mental exercises, which I’m told can ward off dementia.
Though I still think I need flash cards to connect the name of the tune with the tune itself.
:roll:
