Artistes with Left Hand practice

[thanjavooran]

We have seen few Left hand purcussion artistes but not on flute, violin or veena. A week back in Amrutha TV [ morning 06 30 hrs programme conductedby Ajith Namboodiri ] a boy by name Ragunath played flute with his left hand. In HM, Hariprasad Chourashia is a left hander but in CM this was the first time I noticed a left hander playing flute. This year in Thyagaraja festival too at Thiruvaiyaru I could be able to notice a Left hander playing flute. Will it not look odd to see a person playing Violin or Veena with Left hand? Just curious.

Thanjavooran 12 06 2010

[Nick H]

Where mridangam is concerned, unless the seating position is changed, it materially affects our view of the action if the player is left handed. I don't think that the same is true of other instruments --- although with the violin one will get a better view of the bowing hand. I'm sure I've seen a left-handed violinist, but not entirely sure!

No: I don't think it would look odd at all. Of course... it should sound the same.

[thanjavooran]

Mr. Nick
Excellent. Your english is good. But I am very sorry to say that, in this message also not able to understand what you are trying to say. If you are not convinced with the word ' Odd ' kindly replace it with ' funny '
Thanjavooran 12 06 2010

[Nick H]

I think that that is how I understood you: odd, or funny, in the sense of peculiar, or perhaps distracting or disconcerting?

And my reply is still "No"

[thanjavooran]

Enough. Stop there. MInd your words.

[gobilalitha]

Dear Thanjavooran, I am reluctantly stepping in. We are all aware that Nick h is one of our valuable, kowledgable forumites.Even though my personal life is not as happy as i wish, I use this forum to cut some Jokes and make members happy . I felt very sad that you should have used strong words about Nick's reply .

[thanjavooran]

Shri gobilalitha Avl,
I honour your sentiments. Thanx.
with wishes,
Thanjavooran 13 06 10

[srinivasrgvn]

A person playing the Veena with the left hand is ruled out as both hands are required for playing it. This is irrespective of the player being right-handed or left-handed.

[keerthi]

A person playing the Veena with the left hand is ruled out as both hands are required for playing it. This is irrespective of the player being right-handed or left-handed.

obviously, thanjavooran refers to plucking with left hand, and pressing down on frets with right hand; when he says left handed vainika.

This is an interesting idea; but while a violinist trying left-handed playing merely has to change the order in which the strings are placed in his/ her instrument; a vainika's problem is bigger. The bridge for the tAla sarani strings has to be shifted to the other side, and the holes cut in the daNDI (shaft) to accomodate the biradai-s (knobs used for shruti adjustments) have to be made anew; besides reversing the order of strings.

I wish someone would try it.

[Nick H]

I don't know why there should be any misunderstanding between thanjavooran and me: I don't feel anything.

As I understand it:

Question: Does it look odd to see a left-handed instrumentalist.

My answer: No.

There are plenty of left-handed string-instrument players in the world: Guitarists reverse the order of the strings. No doubt a left-handed veena artist would require a custom-built instrument, which might be more than enough to prevent them even taking the first steps in learning, but would such a thing be impossible?

Of course, left-handers all over the world face prejudice and inconvenience.

[thanjavooran]

Nothing. The matter ends here. Let us learn more things from our knowledgable forumites.

Thanjavooran 13 06 2010

[uday_shankar]

No doubt a left-handed veena artist would require a custom-built instrument, which might be more than enough to prevent them even taking the first steps in learning, but would such a thing be impossible?

Not at all. It is ridiculously simple to construct a "left-handed" vina. In fact a 95% version can be improvised from any old conventional "right handed vina". The following steps will do it:

1. Main strings: Reverse the order of the strings...you can use any order of beradais (pegs) because a new left-hander does not "expect" a certain string to be on a certain peg.
2. Tala String pegs: The tAla string pegs pass through the hollow, U-section neck of the vina, i.e., they pass through two holes one on each arm of the U-section. The pegs are tapered and fit snug and secure due to the taper. In order to facilitate that, the holes on the "playing" side are slightly larger than the ones on the opposite. Now we have to reverse that order since the "playing" side has switched ! This would mean that we have to fashion three new pegs of a slighly larger cross-section...in fact, if the existing pegs stick out slightly longer than usual on the player's side (i.e., they have a thicker portion), we might even get away with using them.
3. Tala strings and tala string bridge:Switch their sides

4. Individual tala string bridges on the peg side: These are the little white drums over which the strings pass. They are nailed to the neck and can be pulled out with a pair of pliers and nailed back on the opposite side.


Viola ! A left handed vina.

Total project time: 15 minutes
Tools required:
1. Hand drill (always better to use hand tools than power tools when messing with musical instruments) or power drill, drill bits: 3/16,1/4, 5/16,3/8
2. nose pliers
3. cutter
4. Mallet

The late Alauddin Khan of Maihar, renowed mutli-instrumentalist of yore and guru of Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Vilayat Khan and a host of others, was a left-hander. All his intruments - sarod, sitar, surbahar, been, etc etc - were strung designed for left-handed operation.

ADDENDUM:
I would add one more drill bit size 7/16 as well as a knife, a coping saw and medium grit (150-200) sand paper in the tools list.

Also, the time taken should be upgraded to a half hour. @kssr below is right .

[thanjavooran]

Shri Uday-shankar,
Excellent depiction. Really interesting. You have taken us around a mini workshop.
with wishes,

Thanjavooran 13 06 2010

[kssr]

An engineer is always an engineer. Here is one. Congratulations. But 15 min seems to be too short. Can U kindly allow 7 minutes more!!!

[Nick H]

uday, you must be talking from experience there! Excellent description, and I hope any left-hander who may have doubts may read it and know that nothing is preventing them from learning.

Here is a snippet somebody told me from Western music: Jimmi Hendrix (one of the great players of improvised music of his time and genre) was a left hander, but he played "normal" right-hand guitars. This, apparently, is one of the reasons for his distinctive sound.

[thanjavooran]

IMO it is little difficult to find out LH player in Nadaswaram.[ as it will not be blatant ] But to identify a Ghatam player it is totally impossible. I have a basic doubt. A ghatam artiste does he use both hands with equal strain or otherwise.

Thanjavooran 14 06 2010

[semmu86]

But to identify a Ghatam player it is totally impossible. I have a basic doubt. A ghatam artiste does he use both hands with equal strain or otherwise.

On the contrary it is actually very easy to identify a lefty ghatam artiste. It is similar more or less to Mrudangam. The main hand they use it for treble and the other one for the gumukkis.. You can easily spot the difference once if you see some left handed ghatam artists like Giridhar Udupa, N.Guruprasad ... perform.

[Nick H]

Apart from the gumaka, I think it is tough for the non-musician, especially seated more than a few rows from the stage, to detect how the ghatam player is using his hands

[thanjavooran]

Excellent. This is the first time I hear about LH Playing of Ghatam and Artistes in that type. Definitely it will be very difficult to identify them while performing by a common rasika.

Thanjavooran 14 06 2010

[uday_shankar]

Here is a snippet somebody told me from Western music: Jimmi Hendrix (one of the great players of improvised music of his time and genre) was a left hander, but he played "normal" right-hand guitars. This, apparently, is one of the reasons for his distinctive sound.

Nick,true but this is a somewhat incomplete snippet . Jimi Hendrix did play a "right-hand" guitar with his left hand but only insofar as it pertains to the electric guitar control knobs/levers and placement of other electronics. The stringing order was reversed so that when the guitar was held in the standard playing position by Jimi, the order of strings was the standard bottom to top e-B-G-D-A-E. You can check this out in the following woodstock video of Jimi, by observing the string gauge (as the base pitch of the string increases, the gauge decreases and switches from wire wound string to standard steel string) which is clearly evident in the video but also equally if you know something about guitar playing (or any other string instrument). You can observe how his fingers move across string with the melody and ascertain that the base pitch of the string decreases from bottom to top.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 2665945187#

(There are many instances of close-ups of his fingers moving on the fretboard but perhaps the best occurs around 14:17)

[semmu86]

Apart from the gumaka, I think it is tough for the non-musician, especially seated more than a few rows from the stage, to detect how the ghatam player is using his hands

I actually meant this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scIDaXwB_go
The way Sri.T.V.Vasan plays from 44:00 - 44:06, he is using his left hand for bass/gumukkis and the main hand (in his case the right hand) for the treble sollus. For a lefty, this would be vice versa. Thus i thought it would be easy to differentiate between a right handed and left handed ghatam artiste, even for a non-musician/layman.

[uday_shankar]

quote="semmu86"]

Thus i thought it would be easy to differentiate between a right handed and left handed ghatam artiste, even for a non-musician/layman.

I agree with respect to modern ghatam artists. I wonder if it's true of the old players like Vilvadri Iyer and Alangudi Ramachandran ? I mean, did they follow more symmetrical use of the two hands than modern artists ?

[semmu86]

Uday, i have heard Vilvadri Iyer and Alangudi Ramachandran very few times only on recordings and though i have seen their photos, never seen them performing. And it is also virtually impossible to say based on recordings alone, whether one is right or left handed, or how did they use their hands while playing, unless we specifically know about them before hand like PSP, Guruprasad, Giridhar Udupa etc...Maybe someone who has seen Vilvadri/Alangudi performing might tell us more.. So i don't think i can answer that question.

[Nick H]

Uday... your knowledge never fails to astound! Thanks for correcting my misapprehension.

(At the age when I probably should have been enjoying Hendrix, I did not at all: only later did I come to appreciate his music)

[shankarank]

Carnatic music violates Parity! . It produces left handers at a lesser rate than rightists!

[SrinathK]

All violinists are left handed, but right armed!!

[shankarank]

So playing violin brings some extra wisdom I suppose

[SrinathK]

I describe myself as unsymmetrically ambidextrous.

[Sachi_R]

Shankaran!
Scientific American:

Most humans (say 70 percent to 95 percent) are right-handed, a minority (say 5 percent to 30 percent) are left-handed, and an indeterminate number of people are probably best described as ambidextrous. This appears to be universally true for all human populations anywhere in the world. There is evidence for genetic influence for handedness; however, it is non-Mendelian and geneticists cannot agree on the exact process. There is evidence that handedness can be influenced (and changed) by social and cultural mechanisms. For instance, teachers have been known to force children to switch from using their left hand to using their right hand for writing. Also, some more restrictive societies show less left-handedness in their populations than other more permissive societies.

BTW, I think Guruprasad is left-handed and he plays the ghatam. Do you agree? My thought j's based on watching him accompany TMK in a mridangam-less concert.

[Sachi_R]

I describe myself as unsymmetrically ambidextrous.

I describe myself as more clumsy with my left hand as I drop things frequenter when holding with my left. But often when I write something with my right people think I must have written with my left for fun because it is unreadable

[masundaram]

Shri N.S.Srinivasan, a disciple of flute mali, and a Hyderabad Radio Artist, was a left hand flutist.

[thanjavooran]

Sheik and his disciples are left handers in playing Nadaswaram.
Thanjavooran
14 01 2010

[uday_shankar]

Sheik and his disciples are left handers in playing Nadaswaram.

Indeed. As are Hariprasad Chaurasia, Ronu Mazumdar and Pravin Godkhindi on bhansuri.

[uday_shankar]

Shri N.S.Srinivasan, a disciple of flute mali, and a Hyderabad Radio Artist, was a left hand flutist.

Yes, probably the only south Indian flutist who did that, afaik.

[shankarank]

Shankaran!
Scientific American:

Most humans (say 70 percent to 95 percent) are right-handed, a minority (say 5 percent to 30 percent) are left-handed,

Well nature violating parity is known from Big Bang time.

BTW, I think Guruprasad is left-handed and he plays the ghatam. Do you agree? My thought j's based on watching him accompany TMK in a mridangam-less concert.

Yes. Best way to see that to see the fingering of leftist and a rightist at the same time. Assuming Chandrasekhara Sarma is rightist.

Many differentiating syllables are played on the right by the leftist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSNDggIqCIs