As a left-hander, I have an early hands-on experience with the concept of chirality, or handedness: It can be quite difficult to cut a piece of paper with the left hand using standard scissors; the blades usually do not close precisely, resulting in a frayed cut. And of course, scissors with modern, "ergonomically-formed" handles cannot be used with the left hand in the first place.
There is a small niche market for all kinds of chiral partners of standard right-handed everyday products and tools: left-handed scissors, left-handed can-openers, left-handed pencil sharpeners. However, I do not utilize any of them, and use standard instruments with the right hand instead.
Today, I heard on the radio about something really amazing on the market on left-handed products: There are left-handed pianos!
Invented by Geza Loso, musician, piano teacher, left-hander and father of three left-handed kids, they are exact mirror images of usual pianos, with the pitch rising from the right to the left. As Geza Loso explains on his website: For the first time left-handed people receive a real chance to learn how to play the piano on an adequate instrument. Left-handed people would basically use their right hand to accompany and the skilled hand to handle the main functions of a piano-play, to play the melody. This is very decisive for every artistic interpretation.
The left-handed piano will be distributed by the Leipzig piano-manufacturing company Blüthner. Chief executive Christian Blüthner doesn't expect a big commercial success, but thinks that the left-handed piano demonstrates his company's inventiveness. And I am wondering if my career with the piano may have have been longer than a couple of lessons if the instrument would have been left-handed.
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15 comments:
My brother is also left-handed and took 10 guitar lessons at age 13, from which he taught himself the piano. He's quite good on both instruments, yet he plays both in the normal configuration, as opposed to say Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney, who reversed their guitars' strings to accommodate their southpaw ways.
They've had left handed guitars for years (but not when McCartney started, hence his choice of his now-iconic Hofner viola-shaped bass). I'm really surprised this is the first time a left-handed piano has been produced.
So, what's next on your agenda, Stefan? New piano lessons?
U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3) Where is the chiral symmetry breaking?
Too bad that the arrangements of keys on the piano is not left-right symmetric, otherwise one could just switch an electric keyboard from left- to right-handed. Now I'm wondering how it would sound if one just played a song left-right inverted?
U(1)xSU(2)xSU(3) Where is the chiral symmetry breaking?
At U(1) x SU(2) x SU(3) x SU(4)Spin(6) ?
Just kidding. I don't know. I must say though that like Al I thought this was going to be an article about Chirality based on the title, but it turned out to be an unexpected something else, and pleasantly so.
I don't know Bee, it would probably sound horrible though.
At least computer keyboards and mice are adjustable :)
Savvas
PS I was born a left-handed as well, but I learned (the hard way, ouch!) from my grandmother to be ambidextrous.
I find too unnecessary to construct an actual hardware left handed piano.
It would be a lot easier to make a left handed sampled piano. I mean, if you have a sampler (nowadays that mostly means a software sampler like gigasampler or kontakt) you just can get the samples of some commercialy multisampled piano (as for example the gigapiano, or any of the multigiga sampled pianos for the kontakt sampler) and rearrange the individual samples in opposite order. To play it you would use a regular master keyboard with weighted keys, an that's all.
Hi Stefan,
Interesting as I myself am one of those people who were born not hand decided, which has one favour different hands dependant on the task. With writing it is with my right hand while swinging a bat or golf club left, There are symptoms attached to this, one of which is having a stammer when you are very young which you grow out of rather quickly as you make your choices. Anyway it would be curious to know if a right hander could then play Ravel’s Left Handed Concerto more easily with such a piano:-)
Best,
Phil
Hello Stefan,
why not lay flat on top of the piano
"face down"?
Of course then one can't open the top lid of the piano,
but that could be accomodated by drilling some holes into the bottom...
:=)
Regards
Georg
Too bad that the arrangements of keys on the piano is not left-right symmetric, otherwise one could just switch an electric keyboard from left- to right-handed.
Hm, good point... but thinking about this... the standard piano keyboard actually is left/right symmetric modulo a translation by two white keys, isn't it? That is, the switching would keep fixed one of the "d" keys.
So, for electronic pianos, a software solution should be easy?
Now I'm wondering how it would sound if one just played a song left-right inverted?
Sounds like an interesting experiment ;-)
Cheers, Stefan
I've never even realised that the piano is backwards for us lefties! And I play the guitar left-handed and took piano lessons for quite some time. The more you know.
Dear Stefan,
Yes! After I had written the comment I turned off the computer thinking but when I make a shift in addition it will reproduce the original keys. Was wondering who'd notice it :-) So then, why build a left handed piano when you can just push a button on a keyboard? Best,
B.
In Boy Scouts, at campouts around the evening bonfire, we learned the intimate details of how to use the little known device known as a "left-handed smoke shifter". Of course, the southpaws among us operated it most efficiently.
Lefties Cry Discrimination Over iPhone’s Faulty Antenna :-)
Hi Bee,
So southpaws and iphones are not compatible as they don’t conform with the left handed rule . This then is more serious then simply annoying ten percent of the populous as they are risking pissing off nature:-)
Best,
Phil
I am a father of a left-handed son. I enjoy playing piano. I wrote a midi-conversion program to solve this problem. ( using Delphi and MidiCom3 by invert the data1 to be 124-data1 ). It's much cheaper to make your own Midi-converted electric piano, I think.
The big question is that will my son follow his old-man's command.
Welcome any suggestion about that.
( I am happy to share the program to anyone interested ).
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