As I journey down this wind blown path I started with a Native American Flute. It’s a five hole traditional and I started learning it with my right hand on top and my left hand on the bottom. I must say it feels very comfortable that way and uncomfortable with my left hand on top. That seems to be reverse of how I see everyone play the whistle and it looks like it might interfere when and if I go to flute.
Can the keyless flute be played facing in either direction?
(Oh…I took a high end whistlemakers advice and ordered a Freeman Mellow Dog tweaked from Doc at irishflutestore as I jump in…can’t wait)
LH on top or RH makes no difference on the whistle. It can make a flute difficult as some flute embouchures are only cut to be effective one way. Also flute keys are then in all the wrong places (not that this stops Cathal McConnell). It’s a real problem for uilleann pipes, as you can imagine. I’m a lefty, but play LH on top and if I were teaching anyone from scratch I’d teach them LH top for ease of transfer to other instruments as described.
Emmdee pretty much sums it up. The biggest issue here is transferrance. If it is within you to play right handed (left hand on top) then you will have a much easier time with the flute/pipes down the line. It is worth mentioning that I’ve known some people who were able to play the whistle left handed and the flute or pipes right handed without confusing the two… I, however, was not fortunate enough to pull that off- the linear scale was already set in stone between my left and right hands.
I speak from experience as a right handed person who instinctively played with my right hand on top as I had nobody around to tell me better. Since then I have played the flute and now the pipes and it made finding a used instrument much more difficult. If you have the cash to pay a maker to fix you with a left-handed instrument then there’s no problem but used lefty flutes and pipe sets are few and far between. That said, I was successful in putting together a set of pipes and am now learning them in the same left-handed posture I have played the whistle on for many years.
I’m a right-handed person who taught myself to play the whistle left-handed. I learned to play the irish flute left-handed. The problem came along when I was given a silver flute. It can only be played right-handed. I can now play the irish flute left and right-handed, albeit with different techniques. This comes in handy when sitting in a car and watching TV. I never could figure out the whistle left-handed.
The problem only comes along when a person runs across other instruments to play. It took me over a year of holding the silver flute before I could hold it without cramping. That was time wasted. If I had to do it all over again, I would probably prefer to have learned right-handed. Maybe. I don’t know.
There is next to no difference on the whistle, yet, as already stated, it makes a great difference on flute/pipes/etc.
If you decide to stay with right hand on top, if you ever decide to buy a flute or pipes, always remember to specifically ask for a left handed instrument, as right handed flutes or pipes are near useless to lefties, unless you modify them (definitely NOT recommended, seeing as you can get them left handed in the first place, and people don’t generally like it when you modify a right-handed instrument to play for a lefty..)
If you feel comfortable enough, you can definitely switch to left hand ontop, as it will most definitely help you in a bit of the instrument-purchasing that always plagues left handed instrument players,
Point taken, Hoopy Mike, but I’d then ask the question “Why would you buy a low whistle with the holes offset if they were set the wrong way for you”? Just a thought -
I have a friend (fiddle player and dazzling guitarist) who can play the flute equally well left OR right handed! What a *******!!! I know another guy who plays flute and uilleann pipes left handed but Border Pipes right handed, for the reason that the same note happens to be on different hands on those instruments. That really foxes me, I tell ya…
There are more options than just buying instruments yourself. People buy and give instruments. Instruments are traded. Instruments are in pawn shops and thrift stores calling our names. The chances of a left-handed instrument being in the right place at the right time are slimmer. How lucky are you?
So if I just forget the flute and stick with whistles (low ones as well) I"m good to go. I do play the native american flute and simply learned to play it with right hand on top. Not sure why now. I can force myself to work out the tunes on the naf left hand on top although it feels strange. I think I’ll stick with whistles…great input from everyone though.
