Any Righties play left-handed, or lefties play right-handed?

[Maltozombie]

Wow, a three page lefty thread without Dick Dale

We all deserve 10 lashings for that one lol

Damn ol' dick kicks ass!

 

[Superlizard]

Lefties who play righty are traitors.

 

[TexxasJam]

Wow, a three page lefty thread without Dick Dale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNqnlRxg9tU

:headbang1: ccasion14: :rock-on:

 

[reluctant-builder]

I have always wondered why "righties" fret the guitar with their left hand, and vice versa.  It seems like it should be the other way around.  I'm glad you posed this question.

I know this thread is pretty dead, but I figured I'd try and revive it, or just reply into a vacuum, anyway.

I write left-handed. I play guitar left-handed. I box left-handed. I shoot a rifle with my left index finger on the trigger. In hockey, I'm considered a "right-handed" shot. In baseball, I'd be called a "right-handed" batter. However, I think both of those sports have mislabeled the "handedness" because my hands, no matter which of the aforesaid activities, are always in exactly the same relative position, whether holding a guitar, a rifle, a baseball bat or a hockey stick, my right hand is always the "support" hand -- the top hand -- and my left-hand is on the bottom (if that seems counter intuitive with a hockey stick, just imagine a baseball bat pointed at the floor; butt-end of the stick is in my left hand (it's effectively the stick's bottom)).

I can throw both lefty and righty (baseball, football, darts, whatever) but, in baseball, I tend to throw right and catch left because those were the kind of mitts we had at my house, growing up.

For me, playing guitar, it wasn't which hand was doing what, per se, but what felt comfortable, altogether. Essentially, I hold a guitar the same way I would a rifle, just with the barrel pointing up and to the right instead of straight ahead. What my fingers do was not the most important thing ... because holding a right-handed guitar in my hands feels far too awkward for me to ever get to the point where I could utilize my fingers to play it.

Just my $0.02 to this dead discussion.

 

[AGWAN]

I'm lefty going righty for the simple fact that I want to be able to afford a decent guitar.

 

[reluctant-builder]

I'm lefty going righty for the simple fact that I want to be able to afford a decent guitar.

I think that's a perfectly fair rationale, but I've found plenty of "decent" left-handed guitars out there. Sure, I can't buy every axe I see, but I think that's actually a good thing.

Additionally, I like the relative uniqueness of not playing like the majority of guitarists. Finally, thanks to Warmoth, if I really want a great guitar, I can just build it myself. Instead of shelling out over a grand or over two grand for something stock, made "just because" and for no one in particular, I can specify exactly what I want and have it made expressly for my dexterity.

My MIM Strat did me very well when I was just learning how to play and, when I subbed out the stock pups for Texas Specials, she became a whole new guitar. My Hagstroms are great. My right-handed Gibson-loving friend has remarked at how beautiful my Hags are and how great they sound, and I got them for a fraction of the cost of a Gibby and oriented in a way I can actually play them.

Someday, I'll buy an ES-335, but that's really the only stock guitar that I still want. And it comes in a lefty. I don't feel like I've compromised one bit; I play how it feels good for me to play and I'm happy that I didn't switch to the way everyone else does it.

 

[bagman67]

I'm lefty going righty for the simple fact that I want to be able to afford a decent guitar.

Ahem.

http://www.warmoth.com/Pages/ClassicShowcase.aspx?Body=2&Path=Body&orientation=27

 

[Jusatele]

Lefty here, who plays Righty
but that was not a decision I made, it was forced upon me.
I played lefty from the time I started as a young grommet until I had an accident and the last digit of my right thumb was hanging by a scrap of skin.
well after hours of surgery it was put back on and the doctors told me I would have less than 50 percent use of it. Plus I have no feeling in it.
So I went and about 2 years later bought a right handed guitar, and started learning again.
Yes I mean learning, all the years of Classical Guitar helped as I had a solid knowledge of theory and what I was trying to do was think with the opposite hands, however I had to do all those finger exercises I had set back on the back porch because I was way past them. I would chop wood daily for 3 to 4 hours for about 2 years just teaching the left hand to show up where it was suppose to be when I thought a note or chord, then about another 3 years developing a technique for a hand that cannot hold a pick and I only know where the thumb is off muscle memory and listening to what I am playing.
Bottom line, I am no longer a shredder like I was in the hair metal days, I can blaze for short periods but if I trip I need to find myself fast and reset, all without someone knowing my thumb lost it's place. after 17 years it feels normal, but boy at first it busted me down to tears, interesting enough is I can no longer swap back to lefty like I could at first, I now just think righty.

 

[AGWAN]

Warmoth is not in my price range, while I sure do find them worth the cost. 1,200 dollars is out of reach.

at least for now.

now AS-73's and RG's are plentiful, playable and easy to get for under 400.

If I had endless money and didn't want another guitar this instant. maybe I'd go lefty again,

 

[DangerousR6]

As they say, lefties are in their right mind...

Which explains why we rule the galaxy.

Ahhhhh, but see there lies canundrum.....If your playing lefty then your left hemisphere is controling your fretting hand...Us righties are using our right hemisphere for fretting, so who is actually in thier right mind....A classic test to see how much of your right hemisphere you are using, is to take a drawing and tun it upside down, the draw the picture....Heavily artistic people tend to use the right side more.... :toothy12:

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The more I think about this, I come to this conclusion.  Regardless of what hand does the fretting, and it would seem logical the dominant would, both hands work together.  Rather than view them as separate, view them as one fluid motion.  A drummer doesn't compartmentalize this is for my hands and this is for my feet, rather it's one motion and things are where they are for comfort as much as anything.  The feel of the instrument before you ever fret anything determines the orientation.  Only then could one try to attempt to fret.  For the sake of arguement, if fretting were solely done by the dominant hand, it is more or less saying strumming or picking isn't as important.  It is.  Because one hand is dominant does not make the other lame. 

 

[elfro89]

I've wondered the same thing. Actually, I may try learning to play the other way around sometime or another.

I tried that once. To prove to a student that playing guitar was just a series of good habits that you learn through repeating actions, I tried playing the opposite way to what I was used to and it threw my playing back to the dark ages and rendered all my techniques and skills useless. I'm in awe of ambidextrous people, such as the piano players who seem to have equal control over both hands, must have taken them years of training to reach that level of dexterity.

 

[reluctant-builder]

I can play a righty, upside down and backwards, reasonably well. It's a matter of necessity for me. If I'm at a friends house and I want to play, all I have at my disposal are right-hand guitars. Power chords are easy, single note runs are easy, blues is pretty manageable on an upside down and backwards guitar ... but there are some shapes I can't make. I can play every regular chord in the first pentatonic box upside down and backwards (B7 is the only one that gives me trouble), but to play up the neck is a lot more difficult. Heck, I'm not even that great of a guitar player when it's made for my dexterity!

 

[swarfrat]

I've heard this topic a number of times where it's been put forth that the dominant hand's dexterity better serves the rhythmic functions of the picking hand. Sure fretting has to be learned, and is totally unlike anything not stringed instrument related, but ultimately rhythmic definition requires more precision than mashing down strings.

 

[Jusatele]

I can play a righty, upside down and backwards, reasonably well. It's a matter of necessity for me. If I'm at a friends house and I want to play, all I have at my disposal are right-hand guitars. Power chords are easy, single note runs are easy, blues is pretty manageable on an upside down and backwards guitar ... but there are some shapes I can't make. I can play every regular chord in the first pentatonic box upside down and backwards (B7 is the only one that gives me trouble), but to play up the neck is a lot more difficult. Heck, I'm not even that great of a guitar player when it's made for my dexterity!

I would think that blues with it's use of 9ths 11ths cords inverted a few times would be the hard one to do upside down, Metal would be the easy one using power chords and chromatic leads.
I guess if you play blues like a beginner, but most good blues players I know can blow rock guys away.

 

[reluctant-builder]

Yes, I play blues like a beginner ... when I play upside down and backwards. I can do more complex things when I play left-handed, but I'm hardly a blues master, anyway.

 

[stubhead]

I've heard this topic a number of times where it's been put forth that the dominant hand's dexterity better serves the rhythmic functions of the picking hand. Sure fretting has to be learned, and is totally unlike anything not stringed instrument related, but ultimately rhythmic definition requires more precision than mashing down strings.

I would then have to posit that a sincere & relentless attitude can and has overwhelmed any perceptible advantage of "handedness", in the case of some left-handed people who play right-handed. If you can find some "normal" guitarists with a more disciplined right hand picking and rhythmic approach than Danny Gatton, Steve Morse and Robert Fripp, I'd like to know.

(The longer list of lefties playing right includes: Duane Allman, Ritchie Blackmore, Mike Bloomfield, Rik Emmett, Robert Fripp, Noel Gallagher, Danny Gatton, Duff McKagan, Mike Starr, Janick Gers, B.B. King, Gary Moore, Steve Morse, Joe Perry, Chris Rea and Paul Simon.)

In general, the early ideas about "handedness" as a definitive, simple and fullblown categorization issue have fallen away. There is a broad continuum of people who do one thing better with one hand but other things the opposite, people who can write with both hands, people who have retrained their "weaker" hand to do what the "strong" one used to do... in a broad sense, left-handed people tend to be more ambidextrous than right-handed people, but the entire idea of "left brain vs. right brain" functionality is biting the dust with more research. It's Pop-Psych, based largely on studies of brain-damaged people who lost certain aptitudes as a result. And brain damage turns out to be pretty complex and unpredictable, certainly in the case of assigning "aptitudes" to one side or another.

It has turned out to be a great way to sell a lot of books, extolling one way of learning over another and "explaining" why some people are good at one thing or another, but as a usable predictor of either learning capacity or total aptitude it's turning out to have about as much value as the "theory of childhood development" Sigmund Freud came up with, after his widowed father married a 15-year-old girl - when young Siggie was all of 13 and toting the perpetual boner which is endemic of boys that age. OF COURSE you want to kill Daddy and boink Mommy, Siggie, but keep it to yourself, huh? :laughing11:

 

[reluctant-builder]

In general, the early ideas about "handedness" as a definitive, simple and fullblown categorization issue have fallen away. There is a broad continuum of people who do one thing better with one hand but other things the opposite, people who can write with both hands ...

I agree with you, to an extent. I grew up in a house full of right-handed people and I learned how to do a lot of things they way they did them. There were some activities for which I was more inclined to use my left hand, but other things came just as naturally to my right hand. I have to say, being able to shave equally well with both hands is pretty convenient, especially with a straight razor.

Still, I do think there is something to people's proclivity to favor one hand over another, regardless of the activity, and that the proclivity is hard-wired. That's not to say new connections can't be made and new abilities learned and either mastered or built to a reasonable degree of proficiency. It's like any other spectrum. There are people on one side, people on the other, and all kinds of people in between. If it's a matter of standard deviations, that would imply most people are ambidextrous, albeit to varying degrees ... when it all comes down to it (and, yes, this point's already been made), all guitarists are ambidextrous since it requires both hands to work in unison to do the job.

 

[Jusatele]

As the conversation has turned this way, I will put a bit of input into it
I my left handed from birth, the first 3 weeks I took lessons I was playing right handed, my teacher asked me after seeing me write something if I was left handed and then restrung my guitar for me. He had been frustrated with me before that and he told me about a year later that he was about to suggest I play a horn or something like that when he saw I was a lefty a light bulb went off in his head. I was 8 at the time and studying classical guitar.
I think that at that young of an age it is all mental, we just learn to adapt to a right handed world as we get older, Now that I have relearned to play right handed I a will say that either way is fine, but as I said it is so much muscle memory that trying to be proficient in both is using a ton of practice time to do what would be better done single handed.
Like I said, simple finger exercises I was years past I was doing again, switching is hard to do properly, I can bang out a bass line lefty still, can still grip a bunch of chords that way, but running a 2 octave lick in 16th notes at 120 bpm, ain't going to happen.

 

[Patriot54]

I was just thinking about this the other day, about why right-handed people fret with their left hand. Also, my friend's daughter who just turned 6, and is right-handed, but automatically plays my guitar backwards - I tried once to have her play it right-handed, but she didn't like it so I don't want to force her and we'll just see what happens as she gets older.