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

[isaiahrobinson]

[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.

[Lance_Turbo]

Posted to add:

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.”

[An_Gadai]

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: