# Why is the complicated part of guitar playing done by the left hand?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-complicated-part-of-guitar-playing-done-by-the-left-hand/601610>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 2, 2011, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-complicated-part-of-guitar-playing-done-by-the-left-hand/601610 "2011-11-02T12:56:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![isaiahrobinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@isaiahrobinson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/isaiahrobinson)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2011, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-complicated-part-of-guitar-playing-done-by-the-left-hand/601610/21 "2011-11-03T23:45:02Z")

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[QUOTE=Frylock]  
Chord-and-strum guitar playing, anyway, involves a lot more intricate movements in the left hand than the right hand. This is surprising since most people are right handed. Do we know how it came about?  
[/QUOTE]

I’d guess part of it is because traditionally the right hand on the guitar didn’t tend to strum and certainly didn’t use a pick - it used to pluck the strings individually, which is also a very intricate and dextrous task which arguably requires greater dexterity than simply holding down the strings on the neck.

> [@Mijin](#):
>
> This doesn’t help answer the question – but it seems to me similar to eating with a knife and fork. On the face of it, the fork does the more complex job; it has to get food into the mouth for one thing. Yet most use the weaker hand to hold a fork (unless we’re _only_ using a fork, in which case of course it probably goes in the dominant hand).

Similarly, I agree this is true for a lot of food nowadays, but historically if you were cutting tough meat a lot, and being served food in larger slabs that had to be sawed down rather than in more delicately-sized portions like today, it was probably obvious you needed the knife in the right hand. It’s true even today to an extent - try eating a steak with the knife in the left hand, for instance.

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**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-complicated-part-of-guitar-playing-done-by-the-left-hand/601610/22 "2011-11-04T02:26:44Z")

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Posted to add:

[Elizabeth Cotten](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cotten)  
“Her approach involved using a right-handed guitar (usually in standard tuning), not re-strung for left-handed playing, essentially, holding a right-handed guitar upside down.”

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**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2011, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-complicated-part-of-guitar-playing-done-by-the-left-hand/601610/23 "2011-11-04T02:35:04Z")

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I play right-hand strung guitar upsidedown because I’m a leftie. I’m told all the time by righties that it would be easier for me to play righthanded than it is for them. :rolleyes:

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