This one really gets my goat. Not specifically in respect of the violin, but of string instruments generally.

I recall a letter to a guitar magazine once where the writer, a beginner guitar player and a leftie, said his guitar teacher had told him to learn right-handed. Was this good advice? The mag's editor, a teacher himself, responded saying "Yes - and he'll be doing you a favour". As a teacher he should have known better.

Most people are rightly horrified when they hear stories from years past of left-handed schoolchildren being punished, even beaten, branded "sinister" and "diabolical", for writing with their left hand. Forced by their teachers to use their right (wrong) hand, the result for the child would be at the least frustration, difficulty learning, slow progress, and in many cases the triggering of conditions like dyslexia. Yet here we are, still peddling ignorant advice to left-handed beginner musicians that they should learn to play right-handed.

It's not just a case of one hand being dominant. The only reason one hand is dominant is that one half of the brain is dominant. So whether it's writing or playing the fiddle, if you are left-handed and you try to do it right-handed, you are forcing your brain to work against its own nature.

Similarly, we get this fatuous idea that lefties playing right-handed somehow gain an advantage because the "stronger" hand is doing the supposedly more difficult job of fretting the strings. If that argument held a molecule of water, all you right-handers would be playing left-handed!

There's far more to playing an instrument than the relative strength and dexterity of the two hands. It may be true that the 'weaker' hand can be made stronger and more adept with practice, but the precise co-ordination of the hands - by the brain - required to play an instrument to the best of the player's ability is far more significant.

I'm sure this is a far more tricky problem for fiddle players than guitarists. Good left-handed guitars aren't impossible to find, especially if you're prepared to spend a bit of time searching them out, but leftie fiddles seem rarer than hen's teeth.