Sinister developments

[swarfrat]

I have to admit - I know the boy is not quite 6 months now. And who know's if he'll be interested in guitar, let alone what his hand dominance will be.  (Sinister means left handed for those  exiguous in grandiloquence)

But every time I see this kid reach for something with his left hand - I just cringe. I don't really care which hand he writes with, but if he takes up guitar... it means - not only do I need to buy more guitars (not a bad thing in itself), but it means I have to buy guitars I can't play. Not to mention limiting his choices down the road.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

I'm a lefty and I play righty. So is Knopfler and he's not bad.

 

[TBurst Std]

Lefty (originally) that plays righty. I did change my writing hand back in the mid 80s from left to right due to an accident. (Yes it did affect my playing ability).

 

[sixstringsamurai]

my Grandfather was a lefty, his guitar was strung righty, he played it upside down.

 

[Nando Vallart]

Joe Perry also is lefty and play right There are lots more that I can't remember...
just tell him: you need to use both hands to play guitar, so why get a reversed guitar? Makes no sense... Everybody when start playing has one hand that is as slow as Hodor, that doesn't care which one it is on start, it will need to be trained anyway...

 

[Pelagaard]

I'm a lefty, except when I play guitar/bass.  I intentionally learned as a righty as it made more sense to me to use my more dexterous ( :toothy12: ) hand for the more complicated aspect of playing.

 

[bagman67]

Steve Morse managed to adapt.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Br5P3idxQ

 

[Great Ape]

I'm lefty....play righty....re-laaaaaaax...

 

[swarfrat]

The guys I'm most astonished by are the lefties that play righty guitars without even restringing. Michael Card is one that comes to mind. Talk about determination and independent thinking..

As for the dexterity issue (irony alert. The word even means right handed) i've always figured it makes the most sense to use the more dexterous hand for picking. The fretting hand is basically a glorified string stopper. Try this experiment some time. Pick something simple and very well known, like nursery rhyme well known. Now play every single note wrong, only maintain proper phrasinf/timing and play random steps in the same direction. If the next note goes up a major third, go up by a 2nd instead. If if goes up by a 4th, go up by an augmented fifth... Just keep timing and the relative direction of the intervals.

It'll sound awful, but it is still recognizable, which is really sort of amazing if you think about it.

 

[Cagey]

I've always been amazed by that, too. But, mainly because to me it seems impossible. In real life, I'm sure it depends on how you learn. If you go by ear, never watch anyone else play and never take a lesson, you could probably gain proficiency playing left or right handed, and high to low or vice-versa. You wouldn't know any better, so you'd do what was comfortable. There's no physical reason to play the way the majority plays.

 

[swarfrat]

That was actually what i was thinking - you're pretty much on your own if you go that route. I mean, I find the vast majority of teaching material rendered useless by a simple half step change. (Parallel fourths)

 

[hannaugh]

I think if you start learning it that way from the very beginning , it's probably not a big deal to play right handed when you're normally a lefty.  Both hands have to learn a bunch of complicated stuff, there's no way around that.  Who knows, maybe he'll be a little bit ambidextrous. 

 

[AutoBat]

I didn't know that left handedness was still discriminated against.  Is it still the 1800s?

 

[swarfrat]

If the guitars are coming out of my toy budget, absolutely heck yes!!!

 

[TBurst Std]

I think if you start learning it that way from the very beginning , it's probably not a big deal to play right handed when you're normally a lefty.

Bingo!

 

[Day-mun]

My son is a south-paw that learned to play my right-handed guitars/basses, -and pretty well, too... Then he did something even worse than go lefty with the ax; he got rid of his guitars and took over the drum kit.  :tard: (-Which he sets up and plays right-handed... sort of. I can't explain how he does it, -but it's weird.)

 

[sixstringsamurai]

My son is a south-paw that learned to play my right-handed guitars/basses, -and pretty well, too... Then he did something even worse than go lefty with the ax; he got rid of his guitars and took over the drum kit.  :tard: (-Which he sets up and plays right-handed... sort of. I can't explain how he does it, -but it's weird.)

Well I say be proud, Axemen are a dime a dozen here, a good drummer.....now thats a hard one to come by.

 

[Day-mun]

okay, okay... replace the  :tard: with a  :icon_jokercolor:

I am proud. Hell, the dude can play every position in a four-piece band. If it makes notes, and he has a few days alone with it, he'll be playing it in decent fashion. He walked up to a piano somewhere and just started plunking out recognizable melodies. We don't even have a piano at home.

The world is his oyster! And Swarfrat Jr. will, no doubt, be no different, especially if he's left-handed. Many very gifted and genius people were noted to be south-paws.
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