There are whole collections of memes under the rubric of “Sh*t X People Say,” where X stands in for Men, Women, Teenagers, Old People, White People, Black People, Straight People, Gay People, etc. Most of them are humorous and meant to indicate either cultural closeness or cluelessness.
Well, “It’s Actually Easier!” is the fundamental core of “Sh*t Righthanders Say,” from corkscrews to scissors to all manner of musical instruments. And it’s invariably wrong.
Sometimes these things are said by lefthanders as well — often people who were forced to do things backwards as kids and were neurologically able to manage it, which not all lefties can do.
And as an overwhelmingly dominant lefty adult who isn’t able to do that, I’ve had so many of these things said to me — often in anger, because people can get really weird about this — that I’m acutely sensitive to not saying them myself when it comes to the harp. There are indeed things about the harp that are awkward for lefthanders, but there are also more than a few actual advantages, so I’ll try to talk about them without stepping into the poop-pile described above.
So let’s get started.
The Main Downside: Putting the harp against your off shoulder.
This is pretty much the one main annoyance for lefthanders, the fact that the harp must go on the right shoulder. I have to tell you that in most harping traditions, this is non-negotiable.
I know myself that when I hold a cat or small dog (or a baby the few times I’ve held babies), I am infinitely more comfortable putting them on my left shoulder. I actually can’t put anything against my right shoulder without being at risk of dropping it, so I must hold them against my left shoulder.
Yet the harp goes against the right shoulder, so that the right hand mostly plays the melody and treble clef and the left mostly the bass clef, like a piano.
I can tell you that for me, it felt extremely awkward and unpleasant, but once you realize that the harp isn’t going to fall and you aren’t going to drop it, you can and will get used to it. It’s the one non-negotiable barrier you have to get over, but as you’ll see below, you get a lot of benefit from your lefthandedness.
There are even some folk traditions that put it against the left shoulder, actually — ones where the harp is mostly used as an accompaniment to the voice and hence where the harpist spends most of the time on the bass end of the instrument, and it makes sense for righties to use their right hand on the bass end.
Advantages for Left-Handed Harpists
Now for the advantages:
- Southpaws throw levers with our more capable hand.
- Southpaws won’t buzz nearly as much.
- Southpaws have more creative phrasing.
You will be much more capable throwing levers.
If you play a lever harp, I’m willing to say that that particular instrument is indeed better for lefthanders for one simple reason:
You will be throwing the levers with your better hand.
Lever changes are often talked about with fear and dread by a lot of harpists, and I think that’s self-fulfilling in terms of the nerves people feel when they are confronted with a piece that requires lever changes. They’ve been told it’s scary, so they get scared.
But really, it’s just a button on a machine you paid for. Just push the button, for pete’s sake. Lever changes can be practiced in like any other part of the piece.
And if you are lefthanded, you will be using your better hand for the levers. This should enable you to manage more chromatic pieces earlier and more easily.
You won’t buzz nearly as much.
While there are zings to watch out for on the high strings, most of the risk of sound like a bug light or a lawn mower on the harp — most of the problems with surface noise, in other words — are on the thicker strings and the bass wires.
And you’ll have your better hand on those. Avoiding buzzing will be either second nature for you or at least much easier to practice in.
I actually had no clue that the First Arabesque was a nightmare for buzz avoidance for most harpists. There is one part where I had to pay enough attention to not buzzing that it got irritating and — you guessed it — it’s the climb upward with the right hand in the middle of the rubato where the right hand is suddenly on the bass wires. What a pain in the backside that part of the piece is for me!
Meanwhile, everyone else is sweating over buzz avoidance in the entire rest of the piece.
Trust me, the advantages of surface noise avoidance on the harp are profound for us southpaws. Treasure that.
You have more capacity for interesting phrasing and counterpoint.
This isn’t the case with some pieces, the kinds with the boring oom-pah left hand parts. But in a lot of pieces, a southpaw will be naturally inclined to pull out interesting phrasing in the left-hand part of a piece by reflex, because that’s where we’re paying more attention, even with our ears.
If there is an interesting way to pull a counterpoint voice or a novel counter-melody out of the left-hand part of a piece, you will find it. And it’ll make your interpretation much fresher and more interesting for the listener.
Harp Oddities 