Some of your will know how I recently started volunteering at Brownies for part of my IB course. Anyway, last Thursday we had a "music" night (guess who has most fun banging saucepan lids together! )

Anyway, at the end of the evening, a parent explaine to me she was considering starting her duaghter on flute lesson, but asked, as her daughter was left handed, would she require a left handed flute.

As I have no experinece, I carefully avoided answering the question, but mentioned I would try and research it and get back to her. So here it is, do left handed students require a specially designed flute?

Hope you can all help. Thanks.

I am left handed. and have a normal flute!!

Nat xx

PS- surely not you having all that fun with sauce pan lids!!!?

This question always makes me smile a bit, because the left hand is used as much, if not more than the right hand. Holding the instrument with the left hand above the right is perhaps a bit more natural for left-handers. So if anything, they have an advantage.

I don't think it really affects playing the flute if you are left hand, e.g doesn't disadvantage you.

I am just trying to imagine how someone would hold a left handed flute, if there was such a thing, and it is proving very difficult!

I can't see that it would disadvantage her in any way, except possibly financially: the only left-handed clarinet I've seen was hugely expensive.

Also, imagine trying to teach an instrument that's "the wrong way round". Just looking at pictures of aforementioned LH clarinet did funny things to my head, and I wouldn't fancy trying to teach it. Put the middle finger of your left hand down, no, right hand, sorry, I meant left...

Deborah, do you have any pictures of the left handed clarinet? I scrabbled around on Google but couldn't find anything - all I did find was this link http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/jokes/#clarinet
Cat

Try this:

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&lr...handed+clarinet

It won't open the actual page for some reason (well, not for me) but you can see the picture on the search page

for flutes:

http://www.theflow.org.uk/resources/resour...urces_left.html

though this is more for traditional flutes.

Thanks everyone. I did say that I didn't think it would make much different, but thought I had better check.

you're welcome, and yep, it's always worth checking!