This is inspired by another guitar thread. I’m a right handed guitarist and I’ve always played the typical right hand way. Fret with left hand, strum/pick with right hand. Why is this normal? I’ve always thought it would be easier to fret with my right hand, but I didn’t realize this until I had already bought a right handed guitar and played it for a week.
Now that I’ve been playing 4 years I’m not in a hurry to relearn to play the guitar. But are there any legitimate reasons that we play the guitar the way we do, or is it just tradition?
There was a thread about this fairly recently. Basically, just about any string instrument, from any period and from anywhere in the world, is played in the same orientation. Why, I don’t think anybody knows.
Try this. Touch each of your fingers to your thumb on both hands as quickly as you can. Your left hand can keep up with your right, yes? Now make a stumming motion with your left. More akward, right?
I don’t buy this, at all. I tried the more-familiar-to-me violin motions with the wrong hands, and (apart from feeling very strange), they’re no more difficult.
This may make more sense to move to General Questions since it is about human ergonomics/evolution, etc…
To me, I think of the following (using right-handedness for any examples):
for most any two-handed exercise, the dominant hand is used for power and/or dexterity - golf (right hand is the power hand), swinging a bat, pulling a bow for archery or playing the piano (right used for melody).
Struming or string picking can alternately require more power (hard strumming) or dexterity (complex picking) vs. fretting.
and remember: when fretting, you are: a) following the picking/strumming hand; and b) you have something to hold onto and guide your movements - picking, especially complex flatpicking, often requires you to float your pick hand above the strings (some folks anchor their pinkies on the body of the guitar, but that is considered poorer technique). That is incredibly tough to do and far harder than fretting.
I’ve picked up left handed guitars on occasion. I find that I have no rhythm with my left hand. The fret hand is a little awkward but it’s surprisingly intuitive to fret everything in a sort of mirror image. It’s my strumming that’s the problem. For some reason I just clank away like a spaz with no groove at all. I have no idea why.
This is probably what I said in the previous thread GorillaMan referred to:
While fretting may seem the biggest challenge to a beginning guitarist, at a more advanced level it’s the strumming rhythm or picking that requires greater skill.
It feels more natural to have your dominant hand closer to your body (cf boxing, riflery, etc.).
If it were truly advantageous for right-handers to play a lefty guitar, I can assure you that virtually all guitars made would be lefty guitars.
