Of course I meant "gets here"... my spelling sometimes; goodness. };->

I had some metacognitive ideas about the nature of this topic:

There are a few main catagories:

A> Righties who play right-handed.
B> Lefties who play right-handed.
C> Lefties who play left-handed.
D> ... and of course, Ryan Thomson; the reverse of B. };->

Beyond that, there are attitudinal sub-catagories:

1> "...this is the way I play, and everyone else should too."
2> "...this is the way I play, but you should do whatever`s more natural for you."

There also seems to be a factor of compromise in some of the
twos; like, "*I* don`t care if you play like that, but you`ll
never find a teacher/get in an orchestra/stop wetting your bed, etc., etc."

Not that I`m making any strong judgments about it; it just
occured to me while I was waking up this morning, and so
I decided to share it with the world. (!!!)

Much love, (except for the A1s... j/k) };->
-Jonny

Well we all seem to have been pigeon-holed... but what would be more interesting to see is the proportions of those categories.

It`s often observed that a high proportion of creative people are left-handed... and this is true of musicians. However it doesn`t follow that all these lefties play their instruments to their natural advantage.

This (fascinating) forum thread started out with someone asking about learning to play the violin left-handed. Whilst in other fields to a certain degree it has become easier to play left-handed and to find quality instruments - this is not true of classical string instruments.

Largely this is because of an ingrained culture that does not encourage it.

As a left-handed violinist I am often spotted as an unusual fish, but as a guitarist or bassist it is not considered unusual. If I were to try and get hold of a quality left-handed violin my choice would be very limited... and it is only through the skills of my father that I have had the opportunity to excel at the violin at all.

It is still true that guitarists find acquiring a good instrument a lot more difficult than a right-hander. The last few guitar shops I have visited have had a wonderful selection of right-handed instruments.. some of which were a joy to try out... but the leftys on display were only rudimentary, unpleasantly finished...

I would probably have to go to London to find a decent selection.

The question is, with such a high proportion of left-handers being musicians why is this the case?