Left handed or right??

[KB Gunn]

Now that we are done feeding the troll, I do have a question about semantics regarding the handedness of playing guitar. I play guitar left handed and I feel that this is an erroneous description. I am primarily a keyboardist and use my right hand to play keyboard leads. My left hand is used to play bass lines and chording. It seemed natural to me to play the guitar so that my right hand is the fretting hand and my left hand for strumming and picking. Although I am a lefty for everything else, I find that my right hand is much better at fast playing on the guitar neck as well as the keyboard.

 

It is strange to me that the strumming hand is what is used to identify the handedness of the player. I think that fretwork is much more important than strumming. Why am I not considered a right handed guitarist and all you other guys left handed since you use your left hand to articulate on the neck?

 

BTW, my strings are set up just like yours. I have the bass E closest to my face and the treble E closest to my feet.

[UstadKhanAli]

I don't know. But I am a left-handed person who plays guitar "right-handed". But I've wondered that as well.

[Anderton]

I'm monodextrous, which means I do some thing with my right hand, and some things with my left. I write left-handed, but play guitar right-handed. My standard joke is I can play really complicated chords...really slowly

[blue2blue]

When I was first struggling to play guitar I wondered about this, too, since it seemed like the fretting hand had to do all that 'fancy stuff'...

 

Perhaps it's in part because right-handed people may have better timing control of their right hand, which, after all, is critical, whereas, as long as your left can sort of get into position by the downbeat, you're going to be relatively OK.

 

As a keyboardist, you've probably developed considerable rhythmic precision with both hands.

 

Also, as playing complexity advances, at least where fingerpicking (I'm starting a movement to s-can the now pretension-dripping term 'fingerstyle') is involved, there can be considerable complexity necessary for playing (you especially should pardon the expression) 'pianistically' -- that is, plucking strings as demanded by potentially complex moving lines, rather than the rote/pattern picking of some basic styles.

[Mandolin Picker]

I don't get the 'left-hand/right-hand' thing. It seems mostly to occur with guitar players. I don't ever recall seeing a mandolin picker playing 'left handed'. I don't think there is such a thing as a left-handed flute or saxophone. Can you imagine a 'left-handed' piano??

[MikeRivers]

To right-handed people, "left handed" is how they describe something that just looks (or works) wrong from their perspective. Since the guitar neck sticks out the other way, that makes it "left handed." It's not about which hand you use for what, it's about how it looks to an observer.

 

I write with my write hand, can barely print legibly with my left, and usually eat with a fork in my right hand. But when eating something that needs cutting, I'll often eat with a fork in my left hand and knife in my right. I can always find my mouth with my left hand, but I feel that my right hand gives me better control over the knife. I've never mastered chopsticks with my left hand, though, maybe because they don't make left-handed chopsticks.

 

I do have a pair of left-handed tin snips for when I want to control the work piece with my right hand, and a lot of tailors, whether they're naturally left- or right-handed have left-handed scissors for cutting on the left side of a piece of cloth. Makes sense to me.

[nat whilk II]

Thinking about which hand does the hard job, the fretting or the strumming hand - fast or complex picking has always been where my guitar development hits the wall. My fret hand is ready for the next speed and complexity level before my picking hand is at every stage of development.

 

I'm somewhat ambidextrous, but left-favoring. Since I play right handed on guitar, maybe that's why my left (fretting) hand has to wait on my right (picking) hand to get with the program.

 

I also seem to know what my left hand is doing without having to look far more easily than I know what my right hand is doing without looking. To improve picking, I have to consciously bear down and focus on my right hand, really make myself aware of how it feels while playing. I have to "manually" link the feel with the sound during practice. Otherwise my right hand just drifts into sloppiness, out of sync with my left (and just out of timing sync in general.)

 

My left hand is the child I don't have to watch or worry about. It's almost always doing what it's supposed to be doing when it's supposed to be doing it without supervision, on auto-pilot.

 

nat whilk ii

 

[ggm1960]

I'm a lefty who plays righty guitars but at this point for making max gig dough I'm primarily a keyboard player as the ratio of guitar to all other players around here is about 20 to 1.

[1001gear]

The fretting hand pushes note buttons. The other hand does most of the playing. One thing about playing guitar and keys. As your dual proficiency increases your key playing may suffer due to the required fret / pick latency of guitar.

[WRGKMC]

Its funny you're a keyboardist that learned to play guitar left handed.

 

I'm a guitarists who finds the keyboard was designed backwards and wish they'd make a left handed version so I wouldn't have to completely retrain myself to play keyboard.

 

As it is, The keyboard is a biased instrument design because they are all made the same way. At least with guitar the hands you use are optional.

 

I even thought about rewiring one of my cheap electronic keyboards just so I could have bass on right and treble on left. I'd be able to do much better with my right hand doing bass parts and left hand doing everything else. Electronically they could pull the switch easily with a switch swapping the note matrix, but I guess there is no demand for it. The only option I'd have is to get one of those guitar keyboards or go midi.

 

 

[1001gear]

At least one and maybe several boards from the 80s had an invert function; treble to bass left to right. Come to think of it, you could remap almost any controller type board.

[philboking]

The real work for advanced guitarists is done with the picking hand; that's where you look if you want to learn something. Check out some Doc Watson or Chet Atkins stuff on YouTube and you'll see what I mean.

 

I'm too am sort of hybrid-handed - - I used to ambidextrous, but that faded (mostly) with time. I remember once I had to sign for something in a video rental store, was in a hurry, and signed with my left hand. When I noticed what I'd done, I saw the writing, in cursive, went from right to left! (It looked exactly like my handwriting when held up to a mirror, though).

[elsongs]

I write left-handed, I'm primarily a keyboardist and I'm pretty good with basslines on the left hand, but not so much chords.

I play guitar/bass right-handed though. and I play a drumkit primarily right-handed, but with open (not crossed) arms. But I've tried to play a left handed drumkit a couple of times and found it not as difficult as I thought.

 

When I sing, I hold the mic with my right hand though.

[Phil O'Keefe]

When I was first struggling to play guitar I wondered about this, too, since it seemed like the fretting hand had to do all that 'fancy stuff'...

 

 

I thought about it too. My first el-cheapo kids guitar was given to me when I was about seven or eight years old, and I remember holding it left-handed. I didn't develop as a left-handed player because that first guitar didn't last very long. My younger sister (who was four or five at the time) decided to use the guitar as a pretend "boat", and crushed the soundboard in. I didn't pick up another guitar or get serious about learning guitar until I was a freshman in high school.

 

For the record, I write right-handed, but have a lot of lefty tendencies.

[Notes_Norton]

I don't get the left handed thing either.

 

I used to play in a band with a leftie who could play guitar either way. He learned leftie, then, still as a child, he wanted to play some models not available to him, so he learned to play righty so he could play them. He could switch mid song (amazing) but in the long run he played better with the right handed guitar. Does that mean the standard guitar is a natural left handed instrument or does that mean he just spent more time on the normal guitar? I can't say.

 

I read that Jimi Hendrix signed autographs and ate with his right (verification appreciated).

 

So I wonder if the regular guitar is really a left handed guitar. I'm not about to turn my guitars up side down and learn to play them all over again to find out.

 

Other instruments like violin, viola, cello, double bass, trumpet, trombone flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, organ, synth, euphonium, tuba, and saxophone only come in one model.

 

If the guitar only came one way like the violin, I suppose we wouldn't have this to talk about.

 

I've always thought the regular sax is a left handed instrument. The left hand definitely works harder than the right. There is only one note that doesn't involve at least one finger on the left hand, middle C#. In contrast I can play two octaves G, G#, A, B, C and C# without the right hand. The highest D and D# don't use the right, and I can play a Bb without the right, although it's an alternate and not preferred fingering,

 

So what's the deal with left handed guitars anyway? Not that choices are necessarily bad and I'm happy that those who want one can have one.

 

My big sister (not a musician) is a lefty, so I've seen her deal in a right dominant world. Small things like scissors are a challenge. We take it for granted that we can see the line we are cutting on, but for a leftie, the blade is in the way.

 

I think if I were a lefty, I'd learn on a standard guitar so that all the models are available to me. But then, I'm not a lefty, so I don't really know if I'd feel that way.

 

Fortunately I'm a righty so I don't have to worry about it. Now if they only made a right-handed saxophone.........

 

Insights and incites by Notes