All are welcome to respond, but I am especially interested in the thoughts of professional guitar teachers, and/or left-handed guitar players.
I am an amateur guitarist with almost thirty years’ experience. Although I write, eat and throw with my right hand, I learned to play guitar left-handed. All my guitars are left-handed models, strung left-handed. I play a variety flat-picked and fingerpicked styles.
I taught guitar for several years, and I was always adamant that my students learn to play right-handed. (My reasons: it’s harder to buy or sell a left-handed guitar. And more importantly, lefties can’t take part in the fullness of the community – e.g., unless I bring my own guitar, I probably can’t sit in with a band or play at a friend’s party).
I play regularly at a local cafe. A little girl whose parents work there recently received a small student guitar for her 8th birthday. She delightly picked it up, and held it… left-handed.
When I corrected her, she insisted on going back lefty, saying, “It feels better this way.”
Since she writes and throws right-handed, my guess (and her parents’) is that since I’m the only guitarist she’s seen play regularly, she assumes this is the ‘right way’
I think it would be better for her to learn to play right-handed, and I am trying to decide what to do. (I am probably the one who will end up teaching her).
For the reasons listed above, I think she would be better off playing right-handed.
On the other hand, forcing this might discourage her from playing altogether.
I am of the opinion that since both hands are involved, guitar handedness is less immutable than writing or throwing – I would liken it to batting, which most people can learn either lefty or righty.
One option, which I never considered during my teaching days: teaching her to play left-handed on a right-handed guitar, ala Jimi Hendrix or Elizabeth Cotten. Although I don’t have much experience playing this way, I foresee problems playing certain styles. E.g., with the strings backwards, it’d be a real handicap playing any kind of polyphonic fingerpicking – you’d have to play the melody with the thumb instead of the fingers, and you only have one thumb.
On the other hand, if all she wanted to do was strum chords while sitting around the campfire, it might be no big handicap.
Thoughts appreciated.