Guitar Playing for Left-Handers

Subject: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: NormanD
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 06:10 PM

Has this been covered before? If, so, apologies - - and please do refer me to the thread. If not, then here's the issue.

A friend has said that he wants to start learning to play guitar, from scratch. I have offered to show him the basic rudiments, but he is left-handed and I am right. Is there an easy way of me getting my head round the fact that whatever I try to show him will, effectively, be reversed. I certainly don't see it as his "problem"; if anything, it's mine...... Is there a good way of approaching this? Are there any relevant web sites aimed at Lefties that might be useful for me as well? Or any tutor books that can be recommended (obtainable in the UK)?

Thanks

Norman

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: John Hardly
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 06:21 PM

Man, I've always heard that, as teacher faces student, this is ONE thing about the left hand/right hand guitar issue that is not a problem. Since you face a student you actually DON'T have to reverse anything.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Greg B
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 07:10 PM

It always struck me as rather strange--- most of us learned to
strum the guitar at first, which situation means that the
left hand is doing the complicated bits and the right hand
is used rather like a club.

As a former rag-time piano-player, I have to say that my left
hand was quite capable of rather fancy things, and I'm decidely
'righty.'

So to me it begs the question "why not just have lefties play
the chords with their dextrous hand and pluck the stings with
the sinister?"

I guess I'm not convinced that on stringed instruments either
hand has a more complicated task, per se, just different.

Learning 'lefty' means that borrowing a guitar at a session
or at a friend's house is mostly 'out.' More than 90% of the
nice vintage instruments are 'out.'

I'm not left-handed, but I truly believe that I could learn to
play a left-handed guitar in fairly short order. By inference,
I think a left-hander ought to be able to learn to play a so-called
'right handed' guitar. Because it really isn't. It's just a guitar.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Bernard
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 07:15 PM

I always found that left-handers who played 'standard' way around did significantly better than my right-handed pupils - and Segovia was left handed, too.

The guitar seems to favour left handed people, so there should be no need to reverse the instrument unless the pupil has already started playing 'the wrong way round'!

I've heard lots of arguments to the contrary, but I've yet to be convinced... after all, you don't turn a piano around... and you use both hands equally to play guitar. Yes, people argue that strumming 'feels more natural' to a left hander when the instrument is reversed, but I argue that a guitar doesn't feel natural until you've learned to play it, and strumming isn't exactly the most important consideration!

I'll concede that maybe a fiddle, because of the bowing arm, may need reversing, but then, that's not my field of expertise.

It's also worth remembering that a left handed instrument tends to cost more than a right handed one.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 08:48 PM

Many lefties just play right hand guitar upside down. A fine player of this style is Patrick Gillis of Beolach.
http://www.beolach.com/photos/2006/germany1.jpg

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: John Hardly
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 09:25 PM

um.

Is this yet another thread about how a lefty should learn -- upside down or backwards on a righty guitar, or buy a left-handed guitar?

...'cause that's sure not how I read the opening question.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: wilco
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 09:34 PM

Here's the perspective of aa music store owner, and sometime guitar teacher.
If you learn to play southpaw instruments, you're at a 99% disadvantage for buying instruments and trading unstruments. For every 1000 righties made, there might be one or two lefties.

There are instructional materials just for lefties: books, tapes, DVDs, etc.

Get the teacher to face a mirror, with the student mimicing the reflection: eureka, instant leftie instructor!!!!

Wilco in Tennessee

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 09:47 PM

Let me ask this: how many left-handed pianos have you seen lately?

In my experience as a teacher (about 50 years), I've found that southpaws actually have an easier time learning to play the guitar than right-handers if they learn to play on a standard ("right-handed") guitar.

There is the added advantage that if the left-hander learns to play a standard guitar, he or she can play any guitar, not just their own.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: GUEST,doc.tom
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 02:41 AM

Or, if you're like me, you don't discover it's the wrong way round till you've been practicing for four months in the first place - after all, isn't it logical to have the trable strings at the top and the bass strings at the bottom?

If you don't reverse the strings, you don't have to reverse the chords - they're exactly the same, you just come at then from the otherside of the fingerboard!

The recommendations about the mirror are also very valid for when a R-hander is trying to teach a L-hander to play a L-hand guitar.

If you want to play L-handed, with reversed strings - get a L-hand guitar otherwise you stand a good change of messing up the guitar because of the strutting!

Tom

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: s&r
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 03:01 AM

The strutting may be a factor, but on most guitars the bridge is compensated: stringing it the other way round makes it impossible to tune. When I have a left handed pupil I ask them to play right handed for a fortnight with a loaned guitar before making a decision. In most cases where the student has never played before the adaptation is rapid, and as said above I agree that lefties make more rapid progress.

My wife agrees - she is very LH and plays RH very well.

Stu

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: GUEST,buspassed
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 04:54 AM

My son taught himself the basics of L/H guitar by watching the Bert Weedon video in his bedroom mirror.

As for left handed pianos, there was one commissioned by a L/H'ed pianist in the news some time ago, God knows what it cost!

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 06:09 AM

I know several left handed fiddlers[one intimately] and lefthanded gutarists,they all play like right handers with no problems.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: NormanD
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 08:01 AM

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions so far, guys and gals, they've all been helpful, as I knew they would.

An additional complication I chose not to mention is that my friend has a slight deformity. After an industrial accident, years back, he lost the first joint of his index finger (right hand). So, if he uses his right hand for strumming / picking (playing that standard way) that shouldn't be too much of a problem - at least not insurmountable. But if his right hand is the fretting hand (playing Southpaw) then that could be hard. He just says:"Well, Django got by...."

norman

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 08:22 AM

I've played in bands with several 'left-handed' guitar players who played 'right handed' guitars normally. They all claimed it's an advantsge because they use their 'best' hand to fret.

Also, watch a non-player playing 'air-guitar' (especially youngsters) - they instinctively have their 'best' hand 'fretting' and the other hand 'strumming'.

There are no left handed pianos, there's no need for left-handed guitars (IMHO).

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Midchuck
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 08:50 AM

I'm strongly left-handed, but learned to play right-handed...let's see...it'll be 50 years since I got my first guitar, late 2009. I didn't have any idea that I had any other option. I've never regretted it, especially since I buy and sell and trade guitars somewhat compulsively.

I might have become a better flatpicker if I'd learned left-handed; but I might be a better flatpicker if I'd practiced a lot more, too.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Greg B
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 11:05 AM

Then again, if you're in a duo and you share a mic
(like Lennon and McCartney) it's good if one guy's
a lefty playing a lefty (like McCartney).

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 12:15 PM

If you're using the old Reslo ribbon mics that they used in those days, it would make no difference, as you would sing at opposite sides of the mic facing one another! Been there, done that, worn the Tee Shirt out! :-)

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: leeneia
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 10:16 PM

How lefthanded is your friend? Does he throw left, bat left, eat left, hammer left, pick up items left?

Most likely he is a mixture. People who are 100% left-handed are rare. I believe only 5% of so-called lefties are 100%.

When your friend writes, does he curl his left hand inward? I have read that people who do that have a right-hander's brain. I'm one of them, and as far as I'm concerned it's probably correct.

If I were your friend, I would start playing rightie, and only switch if it just feels awful.

I am supposedly left-handed, but I use my left only for delicate tasks such as writing, embroidering, and washing contact lenses. I play guitar rightie. Guitars are big.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: fumblefingers
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 10:34 PM

The reason we lefties curl our hand inward when we write is to keep from smearing what we have just written with the heel of our hands. This is especially so with a fountain pen.

I doubt that I have a right-handed brain when everything else I do is left. Left handed, left footed.

Trying to pick right handed is awkward--it's clumsy and doesn't feel right.

My old guitar is tuned to an open E and I bar chord it. It sounds like crap the further up the fretboard I go. I gave it up and went back to the keyboard.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: leeneia
Date: 28 Mar 07 - 10:45 PM

You sound like a true lefty, that's for sure.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: GUEST,Northerner
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 09:45 AM

I'm left-handed. I play a normal guitar in normal fashion. I would have thought the other way round would have been harder.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 03:19 PM

I'm left handed and been looking for good professional advice for sometime now. I've been playing about 5 years and I learned to play on a "right handed" guitar, and I would not mind staying that way, it's just I've heard that my picking hand will never be as good as it could be if I were picking with my left hand. What are yalls opions on this.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: PoppaGator
Date: 29 Mar 07 - 05:19 PM

As a right handed person who learned guitar the usual way, I've always thought that the left hand had the more difficult role.

While lefties playing non-standard ("left-handed") instruments are at a disadvantage when trying to buy or borrow a guitar, they are at a distinct advantage when they don't want to lend their own instrument.

I have a very old friend, lefthanded, who became a luthier during the many years we didn't see each other. When we met again not long ago, he had made himself his own very nice lefthanded guitar, and tends to gloat about how he never lands it to anyone, and rarely has to explain or aplogize.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: leeneia
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 11:37 AM

" it's just I've heard that my picking hand will never be as good as it could be if I were picking with my left hand."

It's probably baloney. If you touch type, isn't your right hand as good at hitting the keys as your left? The movements in typing and picking are much the same.

Typing and picking are skills, and the right hand learns them. Your brain has something like 200,000,000 cells and a trillion connections. Given patience and practice, it can do amazing things, including telling your right hand to pick.

------
Are you a true lefthander ? See questions above. Or did you get the label simply because of the way you write?

There have been studies which show the labels "right-handed" and "left-handed" are oversimplified. Observers have learned that for many taska, people use one hand one time, and the other hand another time. Often, people cannot tell you which hand they use to do a certain job. (Obviously, writing is an exception.)

For example, I wash my contact lenses with my right hand and put them in with my left hand. I did that for years without noticing until one day when I had a cut on my right hand and couldn't use it to wash them.

So, I am right-handed or left? There is no simple answer.

Ignore the people who tell you won't play as well. They are probably just part of the great "You sit down and shut up" conspiracy.

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 12:58 PM

"So, I am right-handed or left?"

Good question. I write right-handed, so it's generally assumed (by me included) that I'm right-handed. I also eat, draw, and play the guitar right-handed.

But I fence, shoot, and operate a mouse left-handed, just because it feels more comfortable to do it that way.

So which am I?

Good point about keyboards. How many left-handed keyboards have you seen lately?

Don Firth

P. S. I can scratch with either hand

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: NormanD
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 01:01 PM

Speaking as a right-handed person, and the originator of this thread, I can't really say what my friend plans to do. When I suggested he learns "conventionally" he was a bit horrified at the prospect - but he did learn to play trumpet right-handed (otherwise he'd have had to stretch his left hand over to press the valves, not an easy option).

When things start I hope to report back on this new learning process. Thanks again for the contributions - further comments, opinions, experiences, suggestions are all welcome.

norman

Subject: RE: Guitar Playing for Left-Handers
From: leeneia
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 07:29 PM

That's interesting, Don.

My husband, who I thought was as right-handed as they come, uses a left-handed mouse, too.

I write left-handed, but I find his left-handed mouse very uncomfortable.

I guess the best thing is to try a new skill both ways and see which seems more natural.