I've been playing for years now - right handed, although I'm naturally a lefty. I was simply too impatient when I was 15 to wait and get a left handed G, so I figured I'd teach myself the wrong way round. Was very wierd at first, but eventually my brain re-programmed itself, and now a left hand G feels very unnatural. I've always wondered whether I would have been better, had I learnt left handed - so I finally went out and bought a lefty today!!

Only had 10 mins to practice tonight - picking hand feels ok, (that was always my weakness), but fretting hand feels like it's being controlled by some drunken force, and just wont work. Hope it wont be too long before it starts coming together, and I can actually play something!

Then I'll have to work out what to do with all my RH Guitars. At the very least it will be quite cool, if I can play with both hands!

Anyone else ever tried this ??

There's plenty of famous guitarists who are left handed, but play right handed guitars (Mark Knopfler is one, his dad thought he would have an advantage if his stronger hand was the fretting hand - think he might have been on to something there!).

I've attempted to play a lefty, although after 10 mins gave up and played it upside down, although as I couldn't restring it I also had to play the strings upsidedown to (i.e. EBGDAE). Very strange....

If you end up being able to play both, for God's sake please don't get a Michael Angelo doubleneck thing...

Hewesy

I was thinking of getting the first quad necked guitar or maybe a quad neck with fretless bass on the left bottom, 12-string on the top, fretted bass on the right bottom and 7-string guitar on the top !! Not sure what colour spandex to wear though.....

I'm (for the most part, at least) right-handed but play left-handed. So far as I can tell, I picked this up from my uncle, who was the only guitarist I knew when I was a kid. The funny thing is though that I'm pretty sure he wasn't left-handed either, so god only knows how it all started!

Anyway, I would strongly advise against dabbling with the left-hand path unless you really feel you'll never be as dextrous playing right-handed as you might be as a southpaw. Once you're fully assimilated, guitar shops will become the music equivalent of those old Soviet supermarkets with lots of shelf space but absolutely nothing in them. At the moment, if you fancied a new Tele, say, you could stroll into your local Sound Control, or whatever, and try out as many as they had in stock until you found the one that suited you. And if there was nothing you liked, you could just move on to the next store and work your way through their stock etc.

If you're left-handed, you're just grateful that they've got *anything* in the shop you can actually play. If it's one of the guitar megastores, you'll usually have a choice between a brown Yamaha Pacifica, a badly set-up Mexican Strat and, if you're really lucky, a ludicrous £1600 signature model of someone no one's ever heard of that the shop ordered in by mistake. In the smaller independent stores, they will only have a solitary Stagg, which the sales bloke will try and convince you is every bit as good as anything that ever came out of Fullerton. And then they'll try to persuade you to buy a right-handed guitar and have it converted to a lefty.

On the plus side, you'll save a fortune over the years due to the lack of purchasing opportunities, even once you've factored in the 10 per cent premium that most manufacturers charge for left-handed guitars...

Funnily enough - this is what Turnkey's had in yesterday, for the Southpaws..

1 x Mexican Strat
1 x Mexican Tele
1 x Vintage/Custom Shop Strat Signature thing (£1300)
1 x Epiphone SG (allegedly with some Mahogany in it somewhere) !!

You were almost spot on with your prognosis! Luckily I know a man who can make me (excellent) custom guitars to order, should I continue my journey to the dark side... Wont have to rely on the shops.

I went for the Mexican Tele by the way..... Setup wasn't too bad.

There is currently a theory doing the rounds that modern playing is the wrong way round anyway. The idea was that most of the technique and control for guitar was in the picking fingers on the right hand and all the left hand had to do was fret the strings. However, nowadays, all the right hand does is move the pick up and down a bit and the left has to have the dexterity.

( reverse the above for lefties )

So if you are a more 'modern' style player, then you have done exactly the right thing by being a lefty learning to right handed.

Of course, if you still play guitar properly, then quite frankly this theory is balls.....

My main problem all along, (and to this day), was the rhythm, or lack of it in my right hand. I never got used to using a pick, so play mostly with fingers. Try brushing your teeth with the wrong hand and you'll get the idea! I find it difficult to pick out the right strings, when doing little fills mid strum, and could never pick that fast or consistently. As for left hand being more dextrous on the neck - I don't know??? Pianists have to be pretty dextrous with both hands, and I suppose if you extrapolate that to drummers, there goes my rhythm theory too!

I'm a leftie (in more ways than one) but I play the 'normal' way. I do other things with my right hand too like use a mouse, so i think the two halves of my brain are fairly evenly balanced.

I always thought it was wrong for right handed people to pluck with the right hand and finger the freet board with the left. Right handed people are more dextrous with their right hand, so why confine it to holding a plectrum? They are less dextrous with this left hand, which has got all the work to do in wizzing up and down the fret board! So it would make sense for right handed people to hold a plectrum with their left hand and fret board with the right.

Course, for classical guitar playing with all the finger picking dexterity involved it makes more sense for a right hander to pluck with the right.

Anyway, once you've learned to do it one way why on earth bother changing round? Life's too short!

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Quote Reds:

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My main problem all along, (and to this day), was the rhythm, or lack of it in my right hand.

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Funnily enough this ties in exactly to my own pet theory about why we use the hands we do when playing guitar. My theory runs that the brain is far more sensitive to bad timing than it is to incorrect pitch, therefore we use our stronger hand for rhythm and the weaker one for picking out the right note - could all be complete bollox, but it's a theory...

>;o))

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Rome wasn't built in a day. But it was built...

Yet another leftie playing the "wrong" way round.
I am still frustrated by my lack of speed and dexterity with my right hand picking, BUT I can do a bunch of really cool stuff with my left hand that most righties can`t get near unless they are overall MUCH better players than me - mind you that ain`t difficult,

I used to be a bassist till I got rsi and when I switched from a pick to fingers I found the same problem - loads of cool stuff with vibrato was easy, but fast right hand playing let me down.

My solution has been to make a career out of "tasteful" and "rhythmic" rather than "fast", but to be honest I never have liked the shredder school of guitar.

Mind you, I would like to be able to do some of the Brett mason - albert lee - james burton fast country picking now and then.

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Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

Hi,

I think it is worth pointing out that their is a degree of handedness. People are not 100% left or right but can be somewhere in between....

I am a lefty and play lefty. There is such a dearth of choice in the lefty market that I now am in the planning stage of building my own guitars. Warmoth will do the lefty parts at no extra charge.

For me it was never an issue right handed guitars are the most unnatural piece of crap ever, turn them upside down and suddenly they become an instrument...

Back when I was 11 I wanted to learn to play guitar and my music teacher at school saw me with the guitar upside down and gave me a bollocking for "messing around". After I explained that I was left handed she told me that the correct way was to play right handed or not to play at all.



3 years later I finally had enough money saved up and 6 birthdays and christmas presents saved up to convince my parents to buy what turned out to be a horrible sounding chinese strat clone... IT WAS ACE!

Cheers

Stvy

I'm left handed for writing, but then do a lot of other things right handed, like snooker or golf.

I didnt really get a choice, we had a right handed guitar so i learnt on it, i often have though about switching to a left handed guitar, just it just seems like a pain.

but i will say that as my writing hand is my left hand, i feel i have a lot more strength in this hand than i would if i had learnt to play Lefty style.

glad i chose the Right Side lol

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There is nothing Grim about this Reaper
We Fell From The Sky

Well it's been a couple of days now on the lefty. I have to say, it's not like learning all over from scratch, because you already know the chord and scale shapes and it's been fairly easy to mirror them. Easier than playing upside down imo. I just ordered a set of Kinman Tele pickups to give me more incentive to persevere!!!

One thing is for sure - I wont be locked in to the old 'standard lick patterns', muscle memory and all that. I think that alone will do me good...

Still a way to go though, my RH still feels like its someone else's hand at the moment

Quote Reds:

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my RH still feels like its someone else's hand at the moment

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(insert 'posh wank' joke here)

Still, I guess we left-handed guitarists have it easy (whichever way round we play)

http://www.lefthandedpiano.co.uk/about.html

Touche!

Suppose I found on ebay a lovely guitar with no bids I really wanted other than it was a lefty, then it would be fun to teach myself the other orientation. However I don't think I'd have the time. I'm right handed, but seem to have a reasonable use of my left hand (not enough to write with).

When I got married last year, of the 4 of us standing up the front (Bride's father, Bride, Groom, Best Man), I was the only right handed one!

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and it's a widescreen world around me

No one has mentioned Ernie Isley yet.

Back in the late 80's he had a dream. He was in in a school gym with the floor of clouds. Jimi Hendrix was there too. Jimi offered Ernie his guitar to play, but he couldn't, Hendrix then took Ernie's right handed guitar and played it.

When Ernie woke he decided to learn to play left handed. And also to learn how to play his right handed guitars left handed and the left handed guitar right handed. After a lot of practice he got to the point where he sounded the same playing either handed on either guitar. I still don't have my CD's here, but I'll look up the one he recorded after that.

OK, I can't do it 'properly', but I have taught myself to play some basic chords right handed on a left handed guitar. Very handy for testing when I've got a job to do on a left hand instrument..

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Aye... it's a tricky one to decide if you're a lefty. I often wonder if i could have picked up playing righty just as quick as i consider myself reasonably ambidextrous, however i write with my left hand so sort of assumed that this is my dominant playing hand when i first picked up a guitar.. which either way round seemed pretty damn alien way anyway!

Conversely I've thought of purchasing a cheapo (knackered) righty guitar just to muck about on...

It is a right pain in the arse when it comes to buying instruments not because of availability but because dealers never have ANY decent bloody stock of lefties The only exception to this is Holiday Music in London which has a special lefty section

Joe Zawinaul (of Weather Report fame) had 2 ARP 2600s in the 70s, one with a normal keyboard, the other was reversed...

It's getting a bit spooky round here - I'm yet another guy on this forum who is left handed but plays right handed!

I can still remember picking up a guitar for the first time aged about 10 and the left way feeling much more natural - however the guy that taught me had a right handed guitar and said that was the only way he could teach me - so like some of the others here I'm really glad he did - so much easier buying guitars, borrowing ones etc.

I think the stronger hand stuff is all balls really - you don't need either hand to be particularly strong to play guitar - it's all about human adaptation - now picking up a guitar the left way feels just as alien to me as it did picking it up the right way when I started - I was going to make the piano jokes - but I see someone beat me to it - but there must be millions of lefties who play "right handed" keyboards and not have any noticable detriment to their playing - its amazing what you can learn/adapt to.

I'm convinced that if i were injured or something it would be possible re re-learn the other way round - but other than that what's the point - it has taken me thirty something years to get where i am now - life's too short unless your forced into it

- ok I can play one or two chords upsidedown for a party trick

Like Glyn, I'm a left hander most of the time but use the right for the odd thing like using a mouse, cutting steak, scratching my nose. I don't think that my brain is particularly well balanced in a left-right sense, it's just confused.

Anyway, I play guitar right handed but have experimented with lefties. I had the opposite experience to Reds - fretting with the right was OK, but picking was a nightmare, just couldn't find the strings. And as for fingerpicking, forget it..

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getting better all the time..