My first Forum posting, maybe not a new topic, but here goes. I'm learning the violin, and although left-handed, I play the "right" way around. It feels quite natural this way, with my left hand happy to do the hard bit on the fingerboard. My right, bowing arm is less cooperative, lacking the control I guess a right-hander might expect. I would like to know if this will only improve with practice, practice, practice, or are there any exercises that specifically target a weaker bowing arm?
Related to this, I've sent for a listening programme CD set, from Sound Therapy International. Based on research by Dr. Thomatis (Mozart Effect) it claims to help with laterality and certain hearing issues, including pitch refinement. I would be happy to report my success or otherwise with this in a future posting.

You have made the right decision to learn the right way round! I am a left handed violinist. I think the actions of both hands in playing the violin are sufficiently difficult and unatural that it doesn't make too much difference being right or left handed. Playing the violin and doing the excercises and studies your teacher sets is the best way to develop your "weaker" rigth hand.

There are plenty of left handed professional violinists

How long have you been playing?

Don't worry - bowing is deceptive! To the onlooker, bowing looks like the easy bit, just scraping up and down (!!!!!!!) but for most people it is probably harder to bow really well than to do the fingering.

Also, if you are finding bowing hard, pity the poor right handers who, probably for the first time in their lives have to learn to use and co-ordinate fine motor movements in their left fingers.

Don't be too hard on yourself and keep concentrating on the basics. Good, relaxed bowing hand, gentle, fluent and straight bow strokes, always listening to your sound carefully.

Be guided by your teacher, I expect they have lots of ideas and exercises to help you and progress at this stage.

Bowing can be a bit like riding a bike - seems impossible for ages and the harder you try the worse it all seems to get. So you keep trying at the basics, reminding yourself what exactly you should be doing (and probably cursing with frustration because everyone else seems to be doing it so easily)..... Then all of a sudden it all clicks and you wonder what all the fuss was about.

Be patient, make sure you can do the simple things really well (like open string bowing) before you try to move on. Good luck.

Thanks earplugs, that's reassuring. No teacher as yet, but have just located a promising one, in my corner of Devon. I guess she's encountered this "problem" a few times already...

Thanks, Minstrel, that all sounds like good advice. I've been teaching myself for about a year, and am currently plodding through some Grade 3 set pieces, with varying success. But acting on the axiom that you can teach yourself the fiddle but not the violin, I've finally made contact with a promising teacher from my part of Devon. Progress report to follow...

Zhuologist, I'll get my son to reply when he finishes exams next week, but as far as I can tell, being strongly left-handed does mean that he has to put in a bit of extra work on his bowing.

However, he's always said that it's swings and roundabouts - fingerboard work is relatively easy.

As a Mum with a left-handed kid, I suggest that you take extra care with bowing practice - I think it's a little easier to strain your weaker hand, so it's worth being careful to hold your bow well, and not let tension build up.

I can totally relate to that! My teacher told me just yesterday that my left hand's progressing faster than my right. After thinking about it, I kinda came to the conclusion that it was because I was left-handed. Now I've gotta try to stop that bounce in my bow in down bows lol. Any suggestions?

A 'weaker hand' is not an exclusive issue to left-handed people playing the violin.

Irrespective of whether someone is left or right-handed, everyone has a weak hand. Think of the contortions of the left arm and hand of a violinist - do you not think this could be a weak point for right-handed violinists compared to their stronger left-handed counterparts?

The fact is, either hand (or both) can be strained playing the violin, especially in the early stages or when sudden amounts of lengthy practice ensue.

As for the left hand progressing faster than the right, again, this is not exclusive to those who are left-handed. The bow arm is the one that works hardest - controlling the tone, dynamics, colouring and all the other techniques asked of it. The bottom line is that bow control is difficult, regardless of your 'handedness'. All of my students are right-handed, but all of them have had (or still have) more problems with the bow arm than the left hand.

Stiffness in the right shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand, or fingers will be at the root of ALL bowing problems and is something that needs to be kept a very careful eye on by a teacher.

Remember that only bad workmen will endlessly blame their tools - don't become one of them.

I hadn't realised people play the "wrong" way round. It just means you have a different strength. Never understood why you would flip an instrument anyway, you don't get backwards pianos.

With musical instruments I've never actually felt that my right hand copes better than my left (I'm right-handed). It's strange - maybe I did to start with, but I can't ever remember feeling uncomfortable using the left hand......they sort of become equal when you're playing, because they both have their own job to do, and they just get used to it. (if that made any sense at all )

Bow control is hard for anybody, so to be honest I think it's just something that you'll get used to. As you get more familiar with the instrument, I don't think you'll notice the fact that your 'weaker' right hand is doing something strenuous any more than your left, because it's not like writing, where you only have the one hand. Both hands have to work equally to get the sound, so.......yeah.

Blimey, this is hard to explain.......

I guess what I mean is it's just a matter of playing lots, and getting used to the instrument. It's still something quite new to you, so using both hands is bound to feel strange, but in a few months or a year or so you probably won't notice the 'weakness' of using your non-writing hand.

My daughter is a left handed violinist and working at Grade 6/7 standard now. She does have trouble with her bow hold, now that she is doing some sophisticated technique. I think that she is having to put in more effort on this than a right hander would, but her teacher quite rightly says that it is swings and roundabouts. She has a beautiful vibrato and trills have never been a problem, so some extra practice on the bow hold is just one of those things I guess. Good to know there are professional left handed violinist though!!

I don't think it's a case of "blaming" so much as taking good care of your hands/wrists. The hand you use for most things always has a stronger grip, if you've ever seen people being assessed for physical disability.

ALL musicians have a duty to look after thier body - especially those whose income is earned from the instrument they play.

I know all about physical disabiliy. From the age of 11 I had a registered disabled father. Essentially, if you think about it, we will all have a 'special need' of some kind, something physical about ourselves that makes a particular task difficult without the use of an aid or asking someone else for help. Whether someone needs glasses, a walking stick, or a special mobility moped, strictly speaking they are all 'special needs', since without them, that person may be unable to perform ordinary daily tasks.

Um, I'm sorry, I don't understand! You say that we all have a "special need" of some kind, and we ALL need to look after our bodies - so why, sorry, is it not OK for a left-handed person to look after their particular needs?

If you read my post again I am saying that EVERY musician needs to look after their body. It doesn't matter whether you are left-handed or right-handed, the issue of injury is no different. To say that being left-handed does makes a difference to the possibility of injury does not make sense. Injury is injury regardless of handedness and therefore a left-handed player on a musical instrument is no more suscpetible to injury than a right-handed player.

In a violinist, the possiblty of injury to both hands or wrists is just as great, not just from external forces, but from just playing the instrument itself. Even in a right-handed person, RSI is no less of a risk. Similarly, tendon strain in the left wrist is no greater or less for a left-hand person either. Both hands can and often do suffer just as much. This is evident in advanced students when they start doing 6 hours a day in readiness for end of year exams. Music colleges have them dropping like flies from RSI.

I don't know, I've been contemplating teaching my next left-handed beginner to play the other way round, if they're prepared to have their soundpost moved etc.

Why do the vast majority of left-handed guitarists play the other way round? Paul McCartney's just one example. The only reason left-handed violinists are made to play the wrong way round (for them) is to suit the teacher, and also so their bow's going the same way as everybody else's if they end up playing in orchestras.

Nicola Benedetti is left-handed and while she is certainly a lovely player I did notice something slightly awkward about her bowing when I saw her perform recently and before I found out she's left-handed. And interestingly, all the left-handed people I've taught show a marked tendency to pick up the violin and bow with the wrong hands when they first start out. It's instinct, you see...

I even once read about a left-handed violinist who played the other way round yet still worked in orchestras - good for him I say!

I do read your posts carefully Amanda, because you've so often taken the time to give detailed and practical advice. I'm not trying to pick holes, and I'm a bit shy about questioning you, since I'm only a non-playing mother. You mentioned that all violinists have risks, but your earlier comment was that the left-handed violinist who finds bowing more of a challenge is just being a bad workman.

I just can't make those two comments tally, and since I'm thinking of children and adolescents who are particularly prone to overuse injuries, I find it hard to tell myself that it doesn't matter. Right-hand RSI is a risk to RH people, but "no less of a risk"? That might be true for you as a well-trained adult, but I'm not convinced that it is true of an untrained child with limited strength and agility, or a rapidly growing adolescent just entering the heavy practice/higher technical demands years.

Of course I think that RH violinists might be at greater risk of LH injuries - but the thread was specifically about bowing and left-handedness

Children do tend to be a lot more agile than adults - if they weren't then there would be no real point in getting them to take up sports or activities up that require childhood suppleness that is to become long-term agility. Children also bounce a lot better when they fall over or fall off things, adults tend to break bones instead.

I am right-handed and I have recently suffered RSI in my right hand and wrist from over-practice on the violin, but never did so while at music college, so I know that it's very possible even in someone who has been properly trained and has played for years.

My left hand has never given me any problems fortunately. It is also a lot more mobile than both my right hand and arm, and is (almost) as strong as my right hand. But, with very small hands I've had to be sensible about the fingering I use. When fingering a piece of music for a student, many teachers do not consider physique, especially that of a pupils hand size. A small hand will require almost excessive forcing of the left wrist to reach notes high up on the G string. If a student/performer was to play like this long term, then it is almost guaranteed to result in tendinitis. The actress (and formerly promising violinist) Marlene Dietrich, was one such case. That's why she became an actress instead.

I teach my left-handed grandson. Here's couple of things that might help - or maybe you're doing them already.

To build sensitivity and 'touch' in the bowing arm:

1) Start a bow stroke thus: raise the bow hand high above the violin - say a foot away; gradually bring it down till the bow touches the string. Don't play a note. Now raise it again - just as slowly! Repeat. Try to make the bow hand fall to the string and rise from it as slowly as you possibly can, but at a constant speed. Repeat 10 times each morning.

2) Now do the same thing, but let the bow fall - again as gradually as possible - until it is 1cm from the string. Don't let it touch the string. Now perform a down bow stroke - keeping the bow exactly 1cm off the string all the way. Now an upbow the same. Repeat 10 times each morning.

3) Play an upbow. Make it last 30 seconds. Train the right arm to move at a constant speed (no starts and stops) but very slowly - just like exercise 1 above. Do the same with a downbow.

Be careful! You will find these exercises tiring. So don't do them too much - but do them every (that means EVERY!) day.

4) Play an up bow. Make sure the right wrist comes up as if you were going to hit yourself on the nose with it: on the upbow the wrist should be the nearest part of your arm to the body of the violin. Play a down bow. make sure the wrist is the furthest part of your arm from the violin body. The wrist always leads.

5) It's fairly natural to swing the bow from the shoulder like throwing the discus: you see a lot of players do this. You need to teach yourself not to: for the best sound you want the bow always to be at the same angle (90 degrees) to the string. Keep your right shoulder still and let all the movement come from elbow and wrist. If your shoulder is not working the bow, the funny bone of your elbow should stay in the same place throughout the length of the bow stroke. To educate your body, stand and play with your right elbow against a wall, so you CAN'T swing from the shoulder.

Hi LDW,
Thanks for such a well-informed reply. This all sounds like invaluable advice, and exactly what I hoped for. Will try the exercises out at today's practice, and will report my progress in a future posting.
Enjoyed your entry in myspace, by the way

Too kind!

Hope it helps.

Hi

I started learning the violin 4/5 months ago and I am very strongly left handed but am learning to play the right handed way rather than playing the other way round. To begin with, it was completely alien and my right arm just didn't want to know about bowing, it also didn't help that my right arm is far weaker than my left so my bow was bouncing off the strings and I still have trouble with string crossings. Fortunately, I have a fabulous teacher who gives advice & tips to help me bow and adapted my bow hold to make it easier for me to get more weight on the bow. The key thing I have found is to relax my arm and lots of practice but relaxing my arm has really improved my bowing. Good luck with your playing!

Thanks, Blackbird77. Yes, I really need to work on relaxing that arm, followed by the rest of my body...