I don’t play any instrument but I have often wondered whether being left-handed is a disadvantage or an advantage when you are a musician. About 10% (or slightly less) of the population is left-handed, and we don’t know much why there are so few people who use their left hand instead of their right one. People have a tendency to believe that being left-handed equals creativity, but it is only a myth, as ‘there is very little to support the idea in the scientific literature’ according to psychologist Chris McManus. Studies show that left and right-handed people do not significantly differ by any personality trait or even IQ factor. However, it seems we keep finding strange correlations with being left-handed and specific career choices such as professional baseball players, architects, lawyers, and… musicians. A recent survey in Britain showed a slightly bigger number of left-handed musicians (13%) compared to the national average. Why is that?
There are a lot of left-handers guitarists, and among them you can name for example Albert King, Paul McCartney, Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Los Lobos’ Cesar Rosas, Dick Dale, Styx’s Glen Burtnik, Steve Miller Band’s Gerald Johnson, Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain, the Cure’s Perry Bamonte, Seal, Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi…. But it is complex as many of left-handers chose to play their instrument right-handed (Billy Corgan, David Bowie, Noel Gallagher, Robert Fripp, the Allman Brothers, Johnny Winter, Mark Knopfler,…) whereas left-handed guitarist Hendrix was writing with his right hand!
According to this article, ‘traditional stringed instruments do not discriminate against left-handers at all, because the left hand (which performs the fingering, chords, etc) actually has the more difficult job, requiring most the dexterity.’ So would left-handers have an advantage? Surprisingly, this hasn’t been studied a lot. For pianists, being right or left-handed doesn’t seem to matter as it was demonstrated in a 2011 German study: ‘in both right-handed and left-handed players, it was the right hand (which generally plays the melody) that showed a higher degree of motor control.’ Violins are always played right-handed whatever the handedness of the musicians and the French horn is designed to be played with the left hand, but right-handed people have never experienced any disadvantage.
Actually being left and right-handed doesn’t really mean what we originally thought as researchers actually think that very few people are truly strong left-handed (only 2-3%), while 47% are strong right-handers, the rest being all over the spectrum, choosing a different hand for different tasks. Interestingly, in the 80s, Stephen Christman found out that strong-handed musicians (right or left) ‘were significantly more likely to play instruments like horns (where one hand plays most of the complicated action) or piano and percussion (where the two hands tend to follow independent lines of music, and often different rhythms)’, whereas mixed-handers ‘were more likely to excel at stringed or woodwind instruments, where integration and hand coordination is more important.’ So this means that most guitarists should be in this category, possibly playing with the right hand and writing with the left one or vice-versa.
Then there is the problem of language-processing which comes into play when we are talking about musicians who are also songwriters. Language function is nearly always localized to the left hemisphere. Right-handers have a 95% left-sided dominance for language approaches whereas it drops to 70% for left-handed people. Thus, it was claimed that left handers had an advantage over right-handers because they process more language in the right hemisphere, where melodies and harmonies are also born… however, despite the Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Jimi Hendrix, Cole Porter, David Bowie, Phil Collins, and Kurt Cobain,… we can only say that this would have been a gross oversimplification, and no real serious study has ever proven anything,… the brain being this extremely complex organ which we still don’t understand at all.
At the end being right or left handed matters very little when it comes to make or play music, but as we know being left-handed is a sign of the devil and the myths are hard to kill.
