Question for Left-Handed Guitarists and Bassists

[RobT]

I recently purchased the Steve Hackett CD/DVD set of Genesis Revisited: Live at Hammersmith and have been enjoying it, especially the video. I noticed that the bass player Lee Pomeroy, has his left-handed Rickenbacker 4001 strung upside down, i.e. the low E where you would normally find the D. His six string electric guitar as well and I assume his double neck bass and twelve string. The only other person I ha seen do this was the bass player with Blackfield. I am left-handed, but learned to play right-handed. I am trying to imagine what chording must be like with the instruments strung like this. Do any of you do it? Do you run into chords you have to alter in some way to play them? Not knocking it, just difficult for me to wrap my head around it, thanks!

[bob_32_116]

there is something sinister about being left-handed.

[No Pride]

Jimmy Haslip (Yellowjackets, Holdsworth/Pasqua Band) strings his bass like that too. And if I'm not mistaken, Albert King played lefty and had his guitar strung upside down. I have no idea what that's like; I'm lefty but learned to play righty too. My best guitar lesson was my very first, when my teacher told me I was holding the guitar upside down.

[RobT]

there is something sinister about being left-handed.

You have no idea

[trurl]

I've always wondered with it would feel like to buy a left-handed guitar and flip it and string it upside-down and play it righty. Would probably be a trip!

[Dean Watson]

Being a lefty guitar player sucks! You go into a music store with hundreds of beautiful guitars, and maybe, just maybe, there's 1 lefty guitar. That's why I built 3 of my own.

[Zeuhlmate]

Danish jazz guitarist Uffe Steen has allways done this.
Easily to spot here, thickest string downwards:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlYyhaLZ35w

Here with a band


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmjtMcGjrlU

[Yves]

Doyle Bramhall III is a lefty guitarist that does not re-string. Isn't that the way Jimi played?

[Zeuhlmate]

Jimi played a right hand guitar and re-strung :)
I think Ricthie Blackmore had a period where he did the opposite.

[No Pride]

Jimi played a right hand guitar and re-strung :)

According to one biography I read, Jimi could turn that guitar over and play it righty too. :O His dad thought anything lefty was "of the devil," so if he heard his dad coming towards the room where he was practicing, he'd turn it over. The book didn't say what he did about writing, eating, etc.

Speaking of that, most lefties I know, including myself do some things righty. I eat and write lefty, but I throw, bat and bowl righty. I think our brains were wired wrong.

[trurl]

Well, yes, your brains are wired to be evil.

[Yves]

What's the old saying?

If the left side of your brain controls your right side and right side of your brain controls your left side, then only left-handed people are in their right minds.

[trurl]

They do say left-handed people, being right brained, tend towards being creative. I'm kind of ambi-brained I think. Creative but analytical.

[Rarebird]

According to one biography I read, Jimi could turn that guitar over and play it righty too. :O His dad thought anything lefty was "of the devil," so if he heard his dad coming towards the room where he was practicing, he'd turn it over. The book didn't say what he did about writing, eating, etc.

Speaking of that, most lefties I know, including myself do some things righty. I eat and write lefty, but I throw, bat and bowl righty. I think our brains were wired wrong.
I only thing i do righty, is writing, because I was forced to do this at school.
If I play air-guitar or air-bass, I play lefthanded. With a real bass, I do it right-handed.

[Mister Triscuits]

Being a lefty guitar player sucks! You go into a music store with hundreds of beautiful guitars, and maybe, just maybe, there's 1 lefty guitar. That's why I built 3 of my own.

My advice to lefty guitarists starting out is simply learn to play righty to begin with. It's not at all necessary to use your dominant hand for picking and your weak hand for fretting; it works just as well the other way around. Look at Robert Fripp: he's done pretty well as a lefty playing in right-handed position. And he was even in the same band with another one, John Wetton.

[No Pride]

My advice to lefty guitarists starting out is simply learn to play righty to begin with. It's not at all necessary to use your dominant hand for picking and your weak hand for fretting; it works just as well the other way around.

Yeah. I don't believe that one hand plays a more important role than the other when it comes to guitar. Of course, your advice is only good for someone who has zero experience with a guitar, but wants to learn how to play. Once you've started out lefty, I think you're basically stuck with it. Though I'm glad that I learned how to play righty, I don't think playing lefty is a bad thing by any means. It would've been a disadvantage when I started out in the mid '60s because left handed guitars were pretty rare, but these days it's not hard to get a hold of a good lefty guitar.

[nosebone]

If your righty, do you whip up a batch with lefty?

[Progbear]

I’ve always strung mine with the bass strings at the top. Being a left-handed guitarist is frustrating enough, no need to complicate the situation with a whole different set of fingerings/chord shapes!

[Mikhael]

I'm a lefty, and I don't restring my guitars backwards. I really don't see a need to, since my most dexterious hand, my left one, is on the fingerboard where it belongs...

:)

[Jacob Holm-Lupo]

Lefty here too, but I have always played righty. There never seemed much point to play lefty. Too much hassle.

True story: I wanted to take a few guitar lessons when I was in my early teens. I'd never played before. The guitar teacher sat down with me for a few minutes, noticed I was a lefty, and said: "You're a lefty, you can never play guitar." Then he sent me on my way. After that I didn't pick up the guitar for another 4-5 years, until I finally got over it and realized he was a dick and a moron. Hence my relatively late start playing guitar - started at 17. Thanks, teacher ...

[The Dark Elf]

Worse than the dearth of left-handed guitars is the utter lack of left-handed forks.

[Mister Triscuits]

The guitar teacher sat down with me for a few minutes, noticed I was a lefty, and said: "You're a lefty, you can never play guitar."

Wow. Anybody who would say that is a complete dunce. I once met a guy who learned to play guitar even though he had no arms at all. He played with his feet. Glad you were able, despite what that knucklehead told you, to overcome the terrible disability of being left handed! ;)

[Rarebird]

Wow. Anybody who would say that is a complete dunce. I once met a guy who learned to play guitar even though he had no arms at all. He played with his feet. Glad you were able, despite what that knucklehead told you, to overcome the terrible disability of being left handed! ;)

Reminds me on the autobiography of Thomas Quasthoff, who was refused at some conservatory, because he wasn't physical able to play an instrument. Just being able to sing wasn't enough, he had to play an instrument as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RESX8YroSCQ

[StevegSr]

Mark Knopfler is a lefty who plays righty. (True.) So if he can do it, so can you! ;)

[Mikhael]

I've never seen a lefty piano. Or a lefty tuba. I never saw a lefty guitar when I first started playing; I didn't know there were such things (Started when I was 7). I think I'm actually better off.

[robdebank]

There are some left handed guitarist who learned how to play using their right hand for strumming.

[enoesque]

I've been playing lefty bass and guitar since I was 15 or so. I did start right handed, but after a while, even upside down and backwards felt better to me.

I can play a righty upside down alright when I have to but I prefer strung lefty. When someone is showing me a part, it's like looking in a mirror.

I know a few lefty players that prefer righty upside down, simply because it's far easier to find a good right handed instrument and play it upside down than it is to find a good lefty instrument in a music Shoppe.

The selection where I grew up was poor and has never improved over time.

I was lucky to find the instruments I have.

Drums is another story. My first lesson I was never even asked. It was more "this is how you hold the sticks and let's play!!"

I taught myself how to play bass because I could find anyone who would teach me, unless I learned it the "right way." I got frustrated and just started playing along to The White Album, Fragile, Best of Cream/Hendrix, a bunch of various Who and Rush stuff.

I salute anyone who plays leftie. The struggle is real.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Jefferson James]

I'm one of those confused souls who can use my (as opposed to someone else's) right or left hands pretty much equally.

I write with my right hand but if I hold a pen in each hand at the same time, my right hand writes the word and my left hand writes the same word except backwards, like mirror images of each other. The lefty version isn't as controlled or clean as the righty version but it's basically the same image in reverse. King Midas.

My older sister tried to teach me guitar right-handed but I was incapable of even holding the guitar that way. It felt stupid and wrong and I couldn't do it so sister abandoned me with her guitar and I took it from there.

First thing I did was roll marbles down the neck in-between the strings; prepared guitar, if you will.

I got a late start, too, I was 17 when I bought my first lefty electric, a fake Les Paul I paid $90 for. I never really played it and it wasn't until I joined the military a year later when I really started playing lefty "for real". There was a rec room at my training base and damned if they didn't have a lefty Strat, so I played that thing every night until I bought a lefty acoustic soon thereafter.

A couple of Beatles' books and I was on my way -- diminished and augmented chords! I remember "All My Loving" to be very tough to play, lots of weird barred chords on a bunch of flats. Seriously, my advice to anyone learning guitar has always been, "buy a Beatles guitar book and learn the songs, you will learn enough to get you started."

Once I had my little arsenal of Beatle chords, I started making up my own and began writing original music. It took me another 2, 3 years until I started figuring out how to be a soloist, I took a couple of "jazz" guitar lessons and the teacher was cool with me being a lefty. I, however, wasn't cool with the stacks of scales he gave me to learn, nor the fingering/picking exercises he presented.

To this day I never actually practice anything for any length of time other than to learn it and move on.

I wouldn't change a thing. I like playing lefty, I like the way it looks, and I feel my dominant right hand is in the right place doing all the tricky moves on the fretboard while my left hand feels natural strumming, picking, and finger-picking.

I can "play" a right-handed strung guitar holding it lefty but it takes me literally moments to move from one chord to another. It's not ideal.

With drums I never felt the need to arrange my kit lefty-style, it's too hard for me. I can only drum on a righty kit (if you can call it drumming).

Again, it's that confusion thing. The hot water is always the cold, if I say make a right hand turn I really mean left, etc. You should see me trying to coordinate bowling LOL. "Right foot first, then swing the left arm forward? Or the other way?"