Question for Left-Handed Guitarists and Bassists

[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.


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[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?"