Lefty learning on a Right Handed Guitar

[Jamolay]

I am lefty, very lefty and play air guitar lefty and started playing righty at the age of 55. I chose to do so for many reasons, equipment but also cross brain tasking.

I do think my finger picking and just plain rhythm need some remedial work, so that is advancing a little slower than optimal, however, my left hand does much better on the fretboard and I would still be a mess if I was using my right hand to do that complex task.

So 6 of one, half dozen of another. You will need to train your off hand to do something, regardless.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by thefsb

Very interesting post, ljguitar. It makes me start to wonder what exactly being left handed means.

Hi thefsb
Me too. And I'm considered left-handed. I think it means people throw, use tools, and write left handed for sure. Eye dominance enters the picture for shooting, cameras, playing pool etc.

My father was determined to make me right handed when my parents realized that I was doing pretty much everything with my left (from age 2). He tried very hard & was getting frustrated by it, so at about age 5 (according to my mom) he asked our doctor and she said "Let him be what he wants to be and he'll be just fine." and so from that point on I just developed naturally.

I write, kick, eat, hammer, use knives, throw frisbee, shoot pool, use my cameras (left eye dominant) and a few other things to the left…oh and play chess and cards left handed too as well as iPhone games which require swiping or choosing.

I throw baseballs right handed, shoot guns & bow/arrow right handed, bat both ways, golf conventionally, play guitar normally (with both hands).

It's often we parents who are favoring kids who are lefty, more than the kids care about it.

Interestingly, my wife & I are both lefties, and none of our 4 boys are.

[Mandobart]

Originally Posted by Charlie Bernstein

There was a simple Travis-picking phrase he tried to show me. I was embarrassed because I couldn't get the hang of it. I said, "Sorry, I have a stupid right hand."

He said, "Wait. You're a lefty?"

I came clean, and he went into a full-blown rant about teachers who make their lefty students play righty. Sure, we're good at left-hand noodling and fast chord changes, but anything like Travis picking or Delta blues is virtually unmasterable.

Sorry, but the experience of myself and many others proves your teacher in this case was kinda out to lunch. "Virually unmasterable" for you perhaps, as well as for many other lefties playing lefty, lefties playing righty, righties playing righty and (I'm sure there are some) righties playing lefty. There very well may be those who lack a combination of coordination, motivation, physical mobility, sufficient free time, educational resources, etc. to perform a variety of things.

As I posted earlier it's a spectrum, not a binary left/right. Just like coordination in general, athletic ability, ability to distinguish pitch, ability to sing, etc. We're all naturally somewhere along the continuum. We can work and train and learn and move where we are on the spectrum. We don't all (IMO) have the ability to be at the very top level of skill in every pursuit. But we can all improve.

I'm a lefty. I fingerpick, flatpick and bow a variety of instruments using my right hand. Travis picking, Delta blues, Hawaiian slack key, shuffle and hoakum bowing are all possible for me.

Oddly enough, I wasn't born knowing how to do any of this. I had to learn.

[Bob Womack]

There are many examples of lefites playing righty, all the way back to Duane Allman. Being a lefty playing righty I've paid attention to the style of those who are lefty playing righty, and have discovered something: in almost all cases I can recall, the left (dominant) hand performs better than a righty's does and the right hand performs worse than a righty's. Once you get to a certain level playing single-string leads, for instance, it has an effect on style. You'll see a greater reliance on left-hand hammer-ons and pull-offs, for instance, using the greater facility of the left hand to compensate for a less facile right hand. Think of Mark Knopfler.

So, while at some levels it makes little difference at others it can make a world of difference. I had about four lessons when I started before my instructor gave up on me because of my clumsy right hand. Eight years later he served as the promoter when the band I played lead guitar in traveled back to my home town.

Bob

[Mr.Thumbpick]

Originally Posted by Mandobart

[/B]

Sorry, but the experience of myself and many others proves your teacher in this case was kinda out to lunch. "Virually unmasterable" for you perhaps, as well as for many other lefties playing lefty, lefties playing righty, righties playing righty and (I'm sure there are some) righties playing lefty. There very well may be those who lack a combination of coordination, motivation, physical mobility, sufficient free time, educational resources, etc. to perform a variety of things.

As I posted earlier it's a spectrum, not a binary left/right. Just like coordination in general, athletic ability, ability to distinguish pitch, ability to sing, etc. We're all naturally somewhere along the continuum. We can work and train and learn and move where we are on the spectrum. We don't all (IMO) have the ability to be at the very top level of skill in every pursuit. But we can all improve.

I'm a lefty. I fingerpick, flatpick and bow a variety of instruments using my right hand. Travis picking, Delta blues, Hawaiian slack key, shuffle and hoakum bowing are all possible for me.

Oddly enough, I wasn't born knowing how to do any of this. I had to learn.

Like I said, when you learn classical piano the left and right hands have to do the same stuff. It makes no difference... They both have to be equally dextrous. That one hand is typecast into being on a fretboard and one is picking or playing fingerstyle makes no difference. It's muscle memory and the brain can handle it. It can handle it for piano, it can handle it on a guitar.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by fazool

Rik Emmett is a virtuoso guitarist. He is lefty and plays righty. He said it actually made him a better player to fret with his dominant hand which makes sense

Still, there's a reason why just about every instrument is designed around the concept of having the most common dominant hand handle the sound production and or melodic lines. As implied by the comments about travis picking etc. that's probably a more complicated task of neuro-muscular co-ordination than fretting. There's also a hypothesis that this design has something to do with the fact that the "language area" of the brain is in the left hemisphere (which also controls the right hand, roughly speaking). I'm not aware if there's any empirical support for this, even less if that area is in the right hemisphere in lefties (I expect not).

I'm a bit ambidextrous, and taught myself playing the harmonica "the wrong way around" decades ago. Never gave it a thought why, and I've found that I'm no longer able to play it either way

[schmalex]

I'm left-handed, but play a right-handed guitar. My guitar teacher is also left-handed, and he also plays a right-handed guitar, though I think he has learned to play both ways so that he can teach either way to his students.

I grew up playing piano though, so I always had to use both hands extensively.

[Gordon Currie]

I am a lefty playing right-handed. In 1966 when I started left-handed guitars were rarer than hens teeth.

Even though I am left-dominant in many things, I'm actually fairly ambidextrous.

Apparently, ambidextrous lefties have an easier time coping with right-handed activities.
Whereas 'pure' lefties find their stronger left dominance a big hindrance when confronted with a 'handed' instrument like guitar.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by Mandobart

[/B]

Sorry, but the experience of myself and many others proves your teacher in this case was kinda out to lunch. "Virually unmasterable" for you perhaps, as well as for many other lefties playing lefty, lefties playing righty, righties playing righty and (I'm sure there are some) righties playing lefty. There very well may be those who lack a combination of coordination, motivation, physical mobility, sufficient free time, educational resources, etc. to perform a variety of things.

Yup. Got me. I'm a lazy, ignorant spaz. With a stupid right hand.

Originally Posted by Mandobart

As I posted earlier it's a spectrum, not a binary left/right.

Yup, again. And a lot of us are on a far end of the spectrum. That's why it's a spectrum. I'm an extreme lefty. I have to concentrate to use a can opener.

(See Gordon's post 23.)

Originally Posted by Mandobart

Just like coordination in general, athletic ability, ability to distinguish pitch, ability to sing, etc. We're all naturally somewhere along the continuum. We can work and train and learn and move where we are on the spectrum. We don't all (IMO) have the ability to be at the very top level of skill in every pursuit. But we can all improve.

Of course. As I said.

Originally Posted by Mandobart

I'm a lefty. I fingerpick, flatpick and bow a variety of instruments using my right hand. Travis picking, Delta blues, Hawaiian slack key, shuffle and hoakum bowing are all possible for me.

Yup again. I do some Travis and Delta picking, too. Again, as I said. Audiences seem to get a kick out of it when I lace into some gut-bucket blues. Thumb/finger coordination is just harder than if I played lefty guitar. I'll never have Richard Thompson watching his back.

Originally Posted by Mandobart

Oddly enough, I wasn't born knowing how to do any of this. I had to learn.

Go to the head of the class! Meanwhile, I'll stick with what I said, what a respected guitarist and teacher told me, and what Broy should be allowed to consider: Playing righty makes it harder for lefties to develop finger'-picking chops than if they had started out on a lefty guitar.

Does that override the advantages (which I acknowledged up front,
) of playing righty? Let's let Broy and Broy's son decide.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by Charlie Bernstein

Meanwhile, I'll stick with what I said, what a respected guitarist and teacher told me, and what Broy should be allowed to consider: Playing righty makes it harder for lefties to develop finger'-picking chops than if they had started out on a lefty guitar.

I don't think anyone rejected the fact that that right exists and rather that most contributions acknowledged the potential drawbacks. You on the other hand do ignore the fact that handedness is a spectrum in the above claim (rather than writing "can make it harder".

Someone mentioned eye dominance above. That was a long-standing, absolute concept when I was still in vision research but not long before I moved on to other domains it was discovered that this too is not as black and white as thought. Instead, the dominant eye side also depends on the direction of gaze. Ever the practical blubber, the brain can apparently make the right eye dominant if that's the one that has the more complete field of view. It never occurred to me before but the non-dominant hand dexterity might also be influenced by things like where in our visual space (i.e. relative to the line of sight) it is operating.

Either way, I now see that the boy is 16yo. Still young, but still an age at which the development of a good picking/plucking technique will not be as easy as 10y earlier (unless he played other instruments before). Tell him to set some time aside at the beginning of each practise session to focus on pure sound production on open strings, fingerstyle and/or with pick, and to keen an ear out for tone quality and clean playing in his picking hand. FWIW, my classical teacher has her pupils start out with rest strokes because they really bring out co-ordination glitches. IMHO that's good advice in general but esp. when you're trying/aiming to learn to play "the wrong way around".
I also think that all that practise won't be lost time if ever it becomes clear he should really get a lefty guitar; his dominant hand should be able to learn from his right hand pretty quickly.

On a fun note: like many I find I can write more legible with my left hand if I write in mirror script. Not really the same as playing a "normal" guitar held as a lefty with the string order reversed, but wouldn't it be cool if you could just swap your guitar like that?

[mawmow]

Well, he could also play like Elisabeth Cotton or Jimi Hendrix…