Left hand - Right hand...
 

With all the discussion about searching for the "right" guitar, buying multiple guitars, searching for that "One" or needing several guitars for different styles, I thought I'd re-iterate a quote that I heard decades ago... I don't remember who actually said it first...

(Assuming a right-handed player):

Your left hand shows what you KNOW... and your right hand shows WHO YOU ARE...

Thoughts? Discussion? Agree or disagree?

This sentiment seems fairly "spot-on" to me, as character and personality flows through my right hand into the instrument and then back out into the air... and I hear this in every great player I have ever heard playing...

play on......................................>

John Seth Sherman

I'm left handed. I grew up in the '50s. Teachers beat me for being "sinister", and I was forced to use my right hand to write etc. My mother taught me to read and write before I started school at age 4 and had a beautiful left handed script. The brutality resulted in my being able to write equally badly with either hand, so i am pretty much ambidextrous (or it is amphibious or ambiguous) - whatever it is I tend to be picked on everywhere because I have original viewpoints.

Long ago I realised that I had to adjust to being left handed in a right handed world. When I got into into music it never occurred to me that I had a choice so I learnt to play drums with a right handed kit and when i turned to guitar, I played right handed.

Apart from the sad fact that my left shoulder is semi-crippled and so my elbow and left hand are "wrong" and all give me much pain, I think it best that my dominant hand is on the fretboard.

this was often repeated at Fur Peace Ranch when I was there recently.

I think there is a lot of truth in it as well.

I get the general idea of that saying, however it does under estimate some of the things the fretting hand contributes that can lead to more drive and feeling in a tune - damping single notes and whole chords (for example often readily apparent in boom chuck tunes), use of bends, hammers and pulls, choice of where on the neck to fret notes where different options are available.
If you are not thinking about some of that, you should start to.

Generally speaking: The picking hand performs the active function, and the fretting hand performs the passive function. The volume, tone, and dynamics come from the picking hand. The picking hand is the hand that makes the guitar make noise, aka "speak." The fretting hand supports this action by controlling pitch, adding color, shaping texture, and generally doing whatever the picking hand needs it to do to help it speak fluently.

This is historically why the dominant hand is used to pick, pluck, strum, or bow stringed instruments. "Passive" doesn't mean the fretting hand is less important, or does less work. Obviously one couldn't function without the other, and you can't achieve a high level of ability if they don't learn to work together seamlessly. There are also many exceptions where people have developed a high level of proficiency playing in a unorthodox ways.

It would be convenient if the right hand did not need to learn anything, and only needed to be free to channel one's essential self.

I don't think anyone is trying to make a case for one handed guitar playing.

think about what your fretting hand does as equivelant to learning the alphabet, how to spell a bunch of words and where to place punctuation,
while the strumming hand is like a writer putting all the letters, words and commas in a particular order that is pleasing to the reader.

Nice distinction, Amy... certainly the left hand does a LOT of work, and is invaluable to making music - although Django proved that one doesn't need all those fingers! - but, even with bends, hammer-ons and pull-offs, the right hand is what gives the notes character and flavor...

I mean, B.B. King had a particular way of bending notes, as does Larry Carlton (to use two examples); I would assert that it's the right hand that lends the predominant "flavoring" to those type styles... again, not eschewing the importance of either the learning process or the fretting hand's role in flavoring...

Interesting comments! Many from folks who I would have guessed would endorse the original postulate wholeheartedly! Thanks for the thoughtful replies...

Left for show, right for dough!