Fretting vs Plectrum Hand Question

Factual Questions
1

I’m sure this has been asked before, but I can’t get anything useful from the search function, so I’ll ask it anyway:

I’m right-handed, but when playing guitar or bass, I use my less dexterous left hand to do the complicated fretwork, while my more-skilled right hand is left to deal with the (relatively) simple task of strumming or picking. Why? What would happen if I started playing a left-handed guitar? Would my suddenly mad guitar skillz launch me into Rock God fame in an instant?

What is the principle that keeps us chained to this patently unfair left-handed musical slavery? I see a proponent for left-handed playing exists on this site; he says

It would seem, however, that this author has a bit of an axe to grind:

2

As a middling guitar player, I’ve wondered about this, too. My best guess (and this is purely a guess) is that the sort of picking I do (I mostly play rock) isn’t terribly complex or challenging (it’s mostly just strumming), compared to the style of picking which is common in other sorts of playing, with earlier roots, such as classical and jazz.

3

I don’t know the answer; I’m just posting to say that you used one of my favorite words in the title-- “Plectrum”.

4

The late guitar ghod Michael Hedges was naturally left-handed but played right-handed. I believe he wound up ambidextrous as a result.

5

I thought it was, “just pick up a guitar and do it what ever way feels right to you”, sorta’ like shooting a gun.

Strumming has more finesse, than holding a string at a certain place, other than a lil’ vibrato and other inflections…

The picking hand has other duty’s to attend to… more than pick the right strings at the right speed and time…

While that note plays and held by lesser hand, the dominant hand has to reach for the volume and tone knobs for sound, then mess with a scratchy cord, fix the mic stand, turn amp up to 11…and last buy not least…POINT AT PEOPLE.

Which hand would you like better for this purpose? The one that is dominant, or the one that can’t use a screw driver? :dubious:

There is no left handed Piano…you either sink or swim. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

This is my WAG. Music is more rhythm than a series of notes. If I play the wrong note it’s often not noticeable, especially when playing in a band. Play the wrong rhythm, however, and it’s jarringly wrong. So the rhythm hand ends up being more important.

7

My own feeling is that it’s easy to underesimate the job of the strumming hand. I find the best way to play guitar is to concentrate more on what your right hand is doing than your left hand.

Then again I don’t think reversing your hands is too difficult. I know left-handed people who play their guitar in the right-handed fashion.

8

I think this is correct. There’s a greater margin of error much of the time with your fretting hand.

9

I have a friend who plays left-handed guitar, but doesn’t reverse the strings (how common is that?). When he’s playing he’s apt to say, “don’t try to follow me, it doesn’t work”, and he’s right. So I just ask him the key and the chords and that’s how we get along.

And I’d give my left arm to be ambidextrous. :wink:

Q

10

Can you really follow a guitarist by sight, Quasimodem? I can usually see what a bass player’s up to, but I never got good enough at guitar to have the shapes ingrained in my memory.

Anyone who plays guitar who’s brought it up I ever talked to said the right hand (for a RHer) is the most important, and I never really thought about some of the reasons brought up above. I like the rhythm explanation particularly. Even just straight picking, like a jazz single-note line, you’ve got so many options for attack and timing, it’s got to be mad tough to do it right. Even I could probably do the LH fret hand part, even of hard stuff, but it would take a long time to get that pick hand down good.

11

Non-god (but still-living) bass-player Ají de Gallina is also a lefty playing righty bass and guitar.

12

I think Dick Dale plays guitar left handed and upside down.

13

In the 19th century, classical or “Spanish” guitar was the only kind of guitar. Gut strings were the only kind of strings.

When people played folk/popular music, they usually used pianos or accordions (etc) for simple chord accompaniment to vocal melodies. People didn’t use guitars that way until steel strings became widespread after WW1.

Up till then, guitar playing wasn’t fretting vs strumming, it was fretting vs fingerpicking, which requires a lot more right-hand skill. To some extent, we kept the handedness while losing the reason for it.

For similar reasons, violin is usually played the right-handed way. You might think the left hand is doing the hard part while the right hand is just sawing away with a bow, but if you said that to a violin player, they’d laugh at you. Using the bow properly is the harder part, which is why the right hand usually gets the job.

14

I don’t think there is all that much difference in the ability of one hand over the other, no matter what your “-handedness” officially is.

Just because you write with your right hand doesn’t mean your left hand atrophies.

And no, I am not ambidextrous, but that may be because there never was any pressure for me to be so.

15

That’s a fun one – speaking of Groove Holmes, I heard he was left-handed, and maybe that’s why he was such a unique Hammond player with his basslines – someone suggested as much, probably in joking. I’m right-handed, but despite my rudimentary abilities at playing keys, my left hand feels much more dextrous. Probably because I haven’t worn it out as much.

Check Phineas Newborn, Jr. – he’s got this wild tune he plays with LH. Just a blues, but it’s still sick.

I think maybe it’s a vitamin deficiency or something that makes the unused hand feel more powerful or that its got something to prove.

16

Does anyone know if there are any stringed instruments in the world that are played “backwards” – that is, left hand plucking and right hand fretting?

17

If you’re just going to do simple strumming, you’re not going to tax your right hand much (assuming that you’re right - handed). But, in that case, you’re likely to be playing simple, open chords, so you’re really not taxing your left hand much, either. But the further you getting into guitar playing, the more adept both hands have to be. It’s not really a question of which one does more, since they both have to do different, but essential things. I find that, after not having played for a while, it takes me longer to get my right hand stuff back up to speed than it does to regain my left - handed skills.

18

I’m left-handed and play guitar right-handed. I’m also fairly mediocre, so that must be why. :slight_smile:

19

I’m left-handed, and play left-handed guitar. This is an issue I’m very familiar with.

When I first started to play, I tried holding a guitar in the right-handed position, and then in the left-handed position. For me, the latter felt natural and the former felt quite awkward, so I chose to go left-handed. This natural hand position – dominant hand close to the body, non-dominant hand held out – is seen in other things, such as boxing and shooting a long gun. For some people, this is not much of an issue; others, like me, are very sensitive to it.

When I was looking to buy a guitar, I was in a shop that had no left-handed models. The salesman said I would have an advantage playing right-handed, as I could use my dominant hand for the fretting, which is the biggest hurdle for a beginning player. My thought was, if it’s such a wonderful advantage, why don’t music stores stock mostly left-handed guitars for the benefit of all the right-handed people out there (~90% of the population)? The answer, of course, is that there’s more than just fretting involved.

All things considered, I would say that if you’re right-handed, by all means go for a righty guitar unless you feel a COMPELLING reason to play left-handed. Playing left-handed will pose a limit on your strumming/picking that will likely become significant once you reach a certain level of ability. It also poses a serious limit on your selection of guitars to buy, the ease of reselling them, and the ability to play someone else’s. I’m thinking you’d just about have to cringe at the prospect of playing right-handed to make going for a lefty guitar a good idea.

For lefties, it’s more of a muddle. Some (like Paul McCartney and me) feel compelled to go with the “normal” position for our left-side dominance. Others (like Jimi Hendrix and Elizabeth Cotton) use a righty guitar but play it in a lefty position, upside down – solves the availability problem, but requires unorthodox fretting. And probably about half (like the above-named Michael Hedges) choose to just play right-handed. It depends on which of the various challenges an individual finds most easy to deal with.

But back to the premise in the OP: be assured, for the various reasons mentioned in this thread, that if playing a lefty guitar was truly advantageous for right-handed people, then most righties would be doing just that.

20

For basic chord shapes, absolutely. Players better than me can do it for more advanced chord shapes, and possibly for at least some single note playing.