Any lefties that play rightie here regret goint that way?

[angel13]

These threads do pop up every now and again, and I wish I'd read one when I just started out as after about a year of playing I did wonder if I'd made the correct choice of being a lefty playing right. I'm not particularly strongly left and have a more ambidexterous bent to doing things. As a very young kid, I'd play the tennis racket right handed so that's just the way I went with guitar.

I did initially feel pleased as holding and changing chords was pretty easy to learn, but then when I was learning to strum I'd get the rhythm slightly off every now and again. I've found over time that I need to practice a lot more with my right hand to get more complicated rhythm pattern correct without missing beats, flatpicking is more of a challenge but fingerpicking is a doddle in comparision. My preference is fingerpicking. In order to get better with my right hand, I tend to try and do more everyday things with right hand - stuff like brushing my teeth etc - just to get it used to being more dexterous.

I don't know if any other lefty's playing right have a problem of strumming very specific patterns and singing at the same time? If it's a simple strum I can usually get the song fairly ok, but trickier patterns take a LOT of practice to sing over. I don't know if it's a lefty righty thing where the brain just isn't getting it well, or perhaps just me!

Having read a fair number of these threads now, I'm happy with my choice as most lefty's playing righty have very similar obstacles and advantages. It just makes us unique!

[jfitz81]

Like several others have mentioned, it's really interesting that people find "non-dominant" fingerpicking to be easier than flatpicking. I do have to say that, as a righty playing righty, I also find fingerpicking easier than flatpicking.

Seems like I've read at least one study (hey, I was a psychology student once upon a time!) that showed that left arm movements (from the shoulder and elbow) for right-handed people actually rely on different parts of the brain than right arm movements--and were much less precise, of course. I can tell you that I do a much better job clipping my fingernails with my left hand than I do throwing a baseball with my left arm! Maybe fine finger control is just easier to do with your "wrong hand" than elbow/wrist control?

[JonHBone]

Originally Posted by JayWalkingBlues

I'm not familliar with Elizabeth Cotten, but I had a friend back in the late 90's that played this way. I was really taken with the unique sound his music had. He was schizophrenic....I always assumed that his different approach t music was related to his diorder.

well now you can get familiar. she's on the essential listening list for classic folk fingerpickin' for sure.

[fingerguy]

Originally Posted by JayWalkingBlues

Most of the time I'm happy with my choice to learn to play right handed. I do lack any ability to "shred", even after years of trying. Flatpicking is also weak for me...but oddly fingerstyle was pretty easy for me. Sometimes I wonder how it would have been if I learned guitar lefty. Anyone else in the same boat?

Why would anyone regret it? It's a righty world especially in the musician world. Just walk into Guitar Center and tell me how many lefty guitars (if any) to righties. Feel free to include electric, bass, basically anything with strings!

With that said, I never CHOSE to play righty, I was FORCED to! I started in elementary school with my sister's guitar (obviously a righty). I was holding it in the lefty position till the teacher told me to flip it around. Been playing righty ever since. I am now 41 lefty-dominant man that plays righty.

[cccatty]

Doyle Bramhall Jr. plays lefty on a righty-strung guitar. He toured with Eric Clapton several years ago. Bluesman Albert King also played that way. Weird to watch them playing. I'm pretty sure there are others as well.

Put me in Jimmy Bookout's camp on this issue. Keep in mind, however, that there are varying degrees of handedness as some have alluded to on this thread--so there's that and if you can do either, you'd be crazy not to go righty given the paucity of choices. On the other hand, some of us could no more play the other way than fly to the moon. I often wonder how many lefties made the switch and quit because they couldn't master doing it the other way or really never met their potential because they wasted years going against what was natural for them. I would liken it to back when schools nearly forced everybody to write right handed. Sure, one can learn to write with the opposite hand with enough work. Would they ever be as good at than if they'd been allowed to use their natural hand? Likely will never know, but I doubt it.

By the way, I own a left-handed violin. Can't play it, but they do exist. Made by Gliga in, I believe, Romania.

[tholmes]

Lefty playing righty here. I don't know if you could call it a "decision" to play right-handed, I just did it. The only guitar available to me was right-handed, and that's the only way that I'd ever seen anyone play, so I figured that was how it was done.
Been doin' it for 57 years now, no regrets.
It ain't like I could change now anyway.

Tom

[Pinetreebob]

I'm a southpaw and I've found that living in a right handed world you learn to do lots of stuff right handed. Guitar playing is one of them for me. The only guitars available to me when I first picked on up were right handed so that's how I rolled.
I use my left hand for: Writing, drawing, throwing, eating, batting, swinging a golf club.
I use my right hand for: Swinging a hammer though I am ambidextrous and can and do use my left hand, most power tools (they are all set up for a right handed person), and scissors.
Though I started playing right handed and never really looked back, there are some times when I wonder if I could have been the next Eric Clapton if I had only played lefty.

[Larry Pattis]

Originally Posted by Howard Klepper

And which great violinist is left-handed?

We don't really know, do we...?

[Larry Pattis]

Originally Posted by jimmy bookout

They exist. Just because YOU have not seen them....

So, your business partner councils against playing left handed. That's his choice. The OP feels that he possibly would have been a better player had he gone with his left handedness and played lefty. Both are correct, and both are opinions.

Jimmy

I presented it as his opinion.

Gotta love the AGF...

[Looburst]

I am a lefty and had to learn the right hand way because in my small town, back then, you couldn't even buy a lefty. And my guitar teacher told me it was wiser to do it right hand because you will learn faster. I think he just didn't want to deal with a lefty but honestly, I wouldn't do it any other way! Yes I had to learn rhythm and fingerpicking with my right hand but it wasn't complicated cause I had never done anything like that with either hand so all new either way. So now where ever I go, I can pick up a guitar and play it!

[jimmy bookout]

Originally Posted by Larry Pattis

I presented it as his opinion.

Gotta love the AGF...

Yes you did...

And then you just had to add: "You don't see any lefty violins, if you know what I mean". Only you can know why you felt the need to add that little nugget, I guess that will fall under "gotta love the AGF" also.

Jimmy

[Paraclete]

Originally Posted by jimmy bookout

Uhhh...ok. What exactly is that "solid reason"? Violins/Violas/Cellos/etc are fingered with the LEFT hand and bowed with the RIGHT hand. Jeez. The way you described would in fact be "left handed" violin playing. I am very aware that one doesn't always have choices, much like one doesn't always get one's FACTS correct on the internet.

Jimmy

Sooooo.... When I play a guitar fretted with my left hand and strummed with my right, that is considered right handed, but when I do essentially the same on a violin it is left? You really have a problem and also a chip on your shoulder.

I don't have my facts wrong. I play really a lot of instruments and do not consider any of it to be right or left handed.... If some people want to play it in reverse and claim it to be a left handed thing, then that is their business.

[jimmy bookout]

Originally Posted by ohYew812

Anybody right handed that plays lefty?

Yes.
Me

When I first picked up an ukulele at 7 years old, I felt more comfortable/natural using my strong hand (my right) to fret (the tried and true "air guitar" way). I was 7, didn't know any better (my first uke was NOT a Martin 5K!), so I reversed the strings, got a Mel Bay book (no problem figuring out the chord diagrams) and as Chet Atkins used to say: "Now I'm too rich to quit". Everything I just typed is absolutely the way it happened, except to "too rich" part. No regrets 52 years later other than healthy envy when I walk into Dream Guitars or Gruhns or where ever knowing I am just looking.

Jimmy

PS. Not sure "air guitar" had been invented back then but you get the idea

[jimmy bookout]

Originally Posted by Paraclete

Sooooo.... When I play a guitar fretted with my left hand and strummed with my right, that is considered right handed, but when I do essentially the same on a violin it is left? You really have a problem and also a chip on your shoulder.

I don't have my facts wrong. I play really a lot of instruments and do not consider any of it to be right or left handed.... If some people want to play it in reverse and claim it to be a left handed thing, then that is their business.

Let's see. First I get "whatever" which we all know really means.....
Then I have a problem and a chip. And all because I corrected you.
Sorry, go back and read your post (#37). You said that violins were bowed with the left and fingered with the right, which in your orchestral setting is incorrect.

You typed it, not me. I think we all understand that orchestral instrument MUST be played in a certain position.

You have been here 2 months. I suggest you use the search function and read all the lefty threads that pop up here, so you can get a feel for the subject on this forum and why folks that play the opposite way from the majority are sick of being lectured. Speaking for all the "opposite" players, we would just as soon play and not be told that we're doing it wrong/should have learned the "right" way/guitar is a 2 handed instrument/etc.

Jimmy

[Steel and wood]

One in ten lefties (1% of the population) are by nature "extreme" lefties. (Will gravitate automatically towards playing left handed using a left handed guitar and doing everything exclusively left handed pretty much). The other nine lefties (9% of the population who are far more ambidextrous than the one in ten and the 90% right hander population) for whatever reason gravitate automatically towards playing right handed. (Find it extremely difficult/strange like us right handers to play a left handed guitar even though they are a predominantly lefties).

Therefore guitar companies making left handed guitars only cater for 1% or thereabouts of the guitar playing population, because the other 9% lefties for whatever reason feel it natural/choose to play right handed.

So if you are a lefty, you are either part of the 9% playing guitar right handed like us right handers or the 1% where the simplest/best solution is to find yourself a left handed guitar.

Fascinating subject.