# Can a lefty learn to play right?



## Lincoln (Jun 2, 2008)

I've got a friend who's left handed, He wants to learn to play guitar but he's never touched one before. Starting right from zero.

I'm thinking he'd be better off learning to play a RH guitar.......wouldn't that be an advantage for fingering?

Anybody been down this road before?


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## the-patient (May 19, 2009)

I'm a lefty who plays right handed, because it's all I had on hand when I started, but maybe I was physically designed to play right handed, because I had no inclination to do it another way.

For me it was easy, though now I couldn't play left handed if my life depended on it.

I wouldn't say it offers any advantages though, I'd say go with whatever's natural, because he'll be at a disadvantage from the beginning trying to work against his strong side.

Really, if it offered an advantage, there would be a LOT more people trying to play left handed.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

The short answer is yes, and unless there is some sort of disability, they should. Left-handed players have fewer resources, fewer choices, and more issues when trying to follow other players. (And before I get called on this, yes, these are generalities.) It seems to work fine for piano, and computer keyboards.

In ten years of guitar instruction I've had only a few lefty guitar students (their choice), but many more of them were lefthanded.

Peace, Mooh.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2009)

Sure. And you've got an advantage: your fretboard hand is the more dextrous of your hands right out of the gate.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

I'm a left-handed for almost everything.... and I play the guitar right-handed. 

I didn't think of it the first time I picked up a guitar..playing right-handed just felt "natural"...trying to play/holding a left-handed guitar felt "awkward".

Cheers

Dave


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## xuthal (May 15, 2007)

Give your friend a guitar to strum for a few minutes,if he chooses to go lefty it's up to him,although if i could start over i would choose to play righty with the limited lefty options available.Then again some of the most influential guitarists played lefty,even if they sometimes werent the most technical.There was a blog on jerrysleftyguitars.com about the brain and left handed coordination,theres something to it.I'll try to find it for you.


EDIT:found it, http://jerrysleftyguitars.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
scroll down to the third entry,"why play left handed?" is the title.


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## rockinbluesfan (Mar 3, 2008)

Throw a ball and that is your fret hand! I throw a ball with my right hand - there is no way I could throw left hand thus I play lefty - so why are we called lefty guitar players when the dominant hand is on the fretboard?


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## Lincoln (Jun 2, 2008)

Thanks for the replys guys :smile:

Pretty obvious to me now that he should give a RH guitar a try. Out of intrest I googled Jimi Hedrix and looks like he wrote & held a fork in his right hand. He only played guitar left. Taking advantage of the natural increased dexterity of fingering with his dominant hand.

Things that make you go Hmmmmmmmmmm.


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## xuthal (May 15, 2007)

From Jerry's blog:



Right Brain/ Left Brain

Science knows that your brain has two distinct halves. Your right half controls the left side of your body. The left half controls the right side of your body. Each half of your brain also has a distinct personality. I'll identify these below.

So check out what yor left brain is up to first. Analysis, Logic, Control, Memorize. And this controls your right hand. It does not matter if you are right handed or left handed, it is still true. Seems to me I want my right hand to be in control of that fretboard. All those things having to do with structure and control. All those specific chord structures. All those notes layed out in patterns that has worked logically for hundreds of years.

Now the right brain. controls my left hand. My spontaneous, emotional, unplanned left hand. This is the hand I want holding that pick, or picking those strings. Changing time signatures, holding and releasing, choosing those spaces between each note or strum. I want to FEEL those notes. The MUSIC comes from this emotional movement. So the question seems to me to be "Why would anyone play right handed?"


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## Lincoln (Jun 2, 2008)

xuthal said:


> From Jerry's blog:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I find myself wondering the same thing. I've never even held a lefty guitar......I wonder how long it would take to re-learn it all


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

xuthal said:


> From Jerry's blog:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I hate to rain on Jerry's parade, but the above is not accurate, oversimplified, and based on inferences that are not supported by neuroscience. 

Motor planning and execution of motor movement is far more complex than the basic right/left brain principle.

I hope mhammer sees this and explains. He is very articulate and knowledgeable in this area.

Cheers

Dave


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## bscott (Mar 3, 2008)

I am left handed and play left handed. My fingers on my right hand can easily fall into making chord patterns whereas my right hand looks like a spastic cousin when I try to fret with it.
I belive that all left handed people have to make concessions in order to live in a right handed world. To me it just seems like somethings the brain will not/cannot compensate for or change. I shoot a hockey stick right, bat right but throw left. I can't cut a staright line with a pair of right handed scissors - even if the line was an inch wide. Now give me a pair of left handed scissors and you will get a straight line.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Simpsons, anyone? lol

If he can learn right, get him to learn right - waaaayyy more stuff in the market for him then.


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## sambonee (Dec 20, 2007)

Unless it feels way too wierd then go right handed. Its hard to fall in love with acquiring different guitars and collecting as a lefty. 


I'm lh in all I do except guitar. I started piano at 7 and at 15 my mom fixed a broken guitar that was lying around. I picked it up lefty side and Mom said "no you hold it the other way". That was it. Rick emmett says that the dominant hand on the frets isn't a bad idea. 

For guitar it's just more practical to go RH.


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## Samsquantch (Mar 5, 2009)

3 words: Michael Angelo Batio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROXaetl3Dh0

Cheesy as hell, but I believe this answers the OP's question.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Handedness is not well understood by a great many. Same thing goes for all that right-brain/left-brain stuff. A few facts:

1) Much of the left/right-brain ideas that have been fed to us in highly simplified form distort the actual difference between the two hemispheres. More often than not, much left/right research revolves around findings like a 35msec advantage in response time for material presented to one side of the brain vs material presented to the other. "Specialization" means that there is an advantage of some origin, not that there is "exclusive rights".

2) One of the most well-documented facts about "lefties" is that their brains tend to show less specialization than righties. Pick up any Intro Psych textbook, and you will find that lefties who experience strokes on the left side of the brain tend to show better recovery than righties experiencing a stroke in the exact same spot. The inference that neurologists draw is that skills are represented in the brains of lefties in a more broadly distributed way. One of the difficulties with all the clinical right/left brain research used to support the idea of *this* function being on "this side" or in "this region" is that it is very difficult to tell the difference between a skill being localized in total, or merely something that gets in the way of being able to demonstrate the skill being impaired. I guess a suitable analogy would be letting the air out of one front tire, and then trying to draw inferences from a satellite about where the "basis" of good steering is situated. From the satellite picture, you'd see a vehicle weaving around all over the place. Knowing that one tire was flat might lead you to falsely assume that the tire is where steering "resides" or that the tire "handles steering" the way that we say such-and-such a part of the brain "does X".

3) Estimates are that some 10% of the world is more or less left-handed, although no one (I.E., researchers) seems to know how they got that way. If you give people a list of things they could do with one hand, or body half, and ask them to indicate which hand/side they use, plenty of self-described lefties will behave as righties and vice versa (I'm a righty and grew up using my fork with my right hand and knife with my left). Still, regardless of what indicator you use (which hand do you hold a nail with when hammering, which hand do you use to unlock a door with, etc.) you tend to get about 10% indicating use of left-hand most of the time, with some righties showing up as lefties for that skill, and some lefties showing up as righties.

4) Guitar playing is NOT like sticking a key in a doorlock or picking your nose. It requires the integration of both limbs in a highly complex way, and is no more instrinsically "handed" than playing a flute is. Neither hand could be described as the dumber partner in the arrangement. Both require keen spatial awareness and both require precise rapid timing. It is entirely possible for left-handers to play right-handed and feel just as comfortable as those learned to play "backwards upside-down righty guitars" or those playing left-handed instruments. Certainly the ease with which anything is learned, regardless of handedness, is moderated by the degree to which one has engrained habits or mental maps that interfere or assist.

5) Given the connection between left hemisphere and speech in righties, some years back I asked people on another forum to indicate whether they were left or right-handed, and to indicate which foot they tended to wah with. The underlying reasoning was that using a wah is tantamount to speaking through your foot, in which case one would expect there to be a natural linkup between left-temporal lobe and right foot for righties, but only a modestly evident linkup between left-hemisphere and left foot for lefties. In the end, I could discern no real pattern. There were folks who could go either way, folks who were left-handed but right-foot-only wah users, and so on. Entirely reasonable, given #3 above.


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## OldSoulBluesMan (Jul 9, 2009)

*This is your brain on music*

Very interesting info there mhammer.

You've probably read this one already, but I just came across it last summer.
It's called " This is your brain on music"

It's written by a recording engineer turned neuroscientist. Give's incredible insight to how the brain works and it's correlation with music.

A lot of it escaped me being a layman, but still found it very intruiging. Definitely one for the library.

Back on topic. . . 
My cousin plays lefty, and whenever I pick up his guitar, I try my best to pull off the simplest progressions in left position but to no avail.
Then my impatience shines through and I just play it right/up-side down and fiddle around like that. It's quite the task trying to correct yourself from what you've trained your hands to do over the years.sdsre


OSBM


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## Kenmac (Jan 24, 2007)

mhammer said:


> (I'm a righty and grew up using my fork with my right hand and knife with my left).


Hey Mark, I'm exactly the same way. It throws off some people when they see me eating my food that way and they know that I'm right handed. It just feels more comfortable to me. When I try it the other ("proper") way, it feels awkward.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

OldSoulBluesMan said:


> Very interesting info there mhammer.
> 
> You've probably read this one already, but I just came across it last summer.
> It's called " This is your brain on music"
> ...


Yeah, my wife bought me both of Levitin's books. Personally, I find them a little light, but I've probably got more background in the area than the typical intended reader, so they spend a lot of time telling me stuff I already kow before they get around to stuff I don't know. Still, there is a bit of interesting thinking in them both. Levitin essentially took over the position of the prof who taught me cognitive psych at McGill some 35 years ago. There are a couple of Canadian universities that engage in interesting research in the neuroscience and cognitive science of music, and McGill is one of them. Queen's is another. The link between the psychology department, the music department, the Montreal Neurological Institute, linguistics and computer science goes back well before my time. Actually, a guy I've known from another forum since he was 17 and looking for an engineering program is completing his doctorate in music technology at McGill and working in the area of gestural controllers. VERY hip music program, if I do say so myself.

I've probably recommended it before, but if you find Levitin's stuff interesting, I recommend picking up or borrowing a copy of this book: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=4833


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## gundogfilms (Sep 18, 2009)

*Bruce Cockburn*

Bruce Cockburn is left handed. Plays right. Does just fine.


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## Allfingers (Oct 27, 2009)

greco said:


> I'm a left-handed for almost everything.... and I play the guitar right-handed.
> 
> I didn't think of it the first time I picked up a guitar..playing right-handed just felt "natural"...trying to play/holding a left-handed guitar felt "awkward".
> 
> ...


Same here. As a lefty I'm never sure why a lefty guitar is more suited for a 'lefty'. the myth is more 'cultural' rather than practical. . I had never heard of or seen a left-handed guitar when I started playing decades ago...thank heavens.

I've always found playing a right-handed guitar an advantage. I'd encourage any beginner to get a right-handed guitar because once one plays for a while it's almost impossile to switch over.


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