Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

[Chistopher]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

I do some things left handed and some right handed
I learned to do most things right handed
when I was young I had an astigmatism in my right eye and found it difficult to aim my BB gun right handed
so I switched to left handed

most things are more naturally left handed to me
most learned tasks are right handed
the guitars and baseball gloves are easier to find right handed

I do almost everything right handed because the world is so unkind to us lefties. The only thing I do left handed is write and use chopsticks.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

i am left handed and play righty. So does Steve Morse, Robert Fripp and Paul Simon. Pretty good company, I'd think. It makes sense to me to have my 'dominant' hand on the fretboard.

 

[dave74]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

I do almost everything right handed because the world is so unkind to us lefties. The only thing I do left handed is write and use chopsticks.

Same here basically. My right hand is more dominant but I use my left for writing, eating, pool, rifle/shotgun (shoot handgun and bow righty).
Guitar was always right though, it just feels stupid lefty.

Sports are all right-handed, except I box southpaw but with a dominant front-hand(right jabs and hooks) which then makes it real easy to just step forward with my left leg or back with the right and flip to standard for the big right.

I can't really do anything well both-handed, it's always one or the other,,,,,,,,,,,except beer drinking works well with both lol.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

It seems more like I'm right armed, right wristed, and left fingered. The term "lefty" is largely inaccurate in my case. My left hand is only used for tasks that require the finest of motor skills.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

You know,the singer in our college band was a lefty. He played right handed (regular ) and his strumming/picking looked pretty awkward.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

You know,the singer in our college band was a lefty. He played right handed (regular ) and his strumming/picking looked pretty awkward.

I seem to have found out why that gentleman had issues with his guitar playing. :lmao:

My band had that same problem in college.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

Not going to disagree. I'm pretty sure that for the songs he even was holding the guitar it was more of a prop than anything.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

Not going to disagree. I'm pretty sure that for the songs he even was holding the guitar it was more of a prop than anything.

In my personal experience, I've found that most singers that also play guitar are phenomenal at both or, to put it kindly, not so good at either. There is the occasional person who can do both decent, but they tend to find themselves at either end of the spectrum.

 

[dave74]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

Tommy Keifer was one that did very well playing and singing together.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

You know, most of the truly great guitar players also sang, maybe not full time, but they did sing at least enough to be known for it. Ya got Hendrix, Clapton, SRV, Cobain (don't care for grunge, but you gotta admit he was influential), Elvis, Johnny Cash, Knopfler, Chuck Berry, Prince, B.B. King, David Gilmour, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Gibbons, Joe Walsh, Chet Atkins, Santana, and Bob Dylan.

Did I miss any?

 

[Little Pigbacon]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

I don't think they are. Let's not downplay the role of the pick hand. It has to drive the act of playing, rhythmically, as well as provide nearly all the energy that sounds the strings. It has to do this for six (or more) strings with all those different ways of attacking them, all while you look somewhere else. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm glad it's my dominant hand doing that.

 

[dave74]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

I don't think they are. Let's not downplay the role of the pick hand. It has to drive the act of playing, rhythmically, as well as provide nearly all the energy that sounds the strings. It has to do this for six (or more) strings with all those different ways of attacking them, all while you look somewhere else. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm glad it's my dominant hand doing that.

That feels like more of the reason I play right-handed, not because the left prefers the board. My right just needs to be "in control".
My brain seems to require more concentration on the picking-hand really.

 

[Coma]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

Growing up, my older brother and I shared guitars. He's left-handed, so he just learned from the get-go how to play on a rightie guitar.

To me, what's more interesting is perception. All electric lefties look odd to me, but some more than others. Strats and their ilk aren't too bad, but something like explorers just look wonky as all hell. You start to notice all the little quirks, like how the neck and pickups aren't really center-aligned.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

Growing up, my older brother and I shared guitars. He's left-handed, so he just learned from the get-go how to play on a rightie guitar.

To me, what's more interesting is perception. All electric lefties look odd to me, but some more than others. Strats and their ilk aren't to bad, but something like explorers justlook wonky as all hell. You start to notice all the little quirks, like how the neck and pickups aren't really center-aligned.

The only nonsymmetical guitar I can stand the look of is the Firebird. And I think that's because the pickups are centered, given that the model is traditionally neck through. But for some reason, I did like Gibson's reverse Explorer and Flying V. But then again, they are styled similarly to the Right hand reverse Strat I posted a pic of earlier, we'll not the reverse V so much.

 

[LtKojak]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

why is the traditional guitar setup so that the player's nondominate hand is doing the fretting work, which is harder on the hand with less fine motor skills.

This is a flawed logic assessment.

The mechanics behind guitar playing is all about synchronicity. Both sides of the brain are constantly at play to make this happen. The brain must time the exact moment when the finger plucks the string to be in synch with the other finger pressing the right string at the right location on the fingerboard at the right time so it will sound clean. It doesn't matter what is the dominant hand. Once you learn an established and accepted physical position, the rest is up to the brain to retain the movements into what's called "muscular memory". Plus with time, the brain will separately process every learned synchronised movement and put it together in new ways, so you can play different songs, styles, etc.

To play an instrument like the guitar requires tremendous resources from raw brain power. When I think how much is required to correctly play the second movement of Agustin Barrios Mangorè "La Catedral" in terms of brain's raw power, I almost scare myself. However, I was able to play it as my "piece de resistance" when getting my diplom in classical music at the conservatory. At the ceremony, the diploms were handed to the alumni by the guest of honor, Paco de Lucia. I was eleven years old. What I mean by that is that it didn't really matter how much it was. For the brain was, literally, "child's play", pun intended.

My closing point is: is "convention" had dictated to learn to play on a now called "left-hand" instrument, I'd today be playing with one of those. When you don't know how it's "supposed to be", it won't matter in the least how you do it. Most left-handed learn on right-handed instruments, and some of them continue even after achieve incredible levels of dexterity. Fx, the Yellow Jackets bass player, Jimmy Haslip. He plays a left-handed bass. However, the strings are put like in a right-handed instrument. His choice.

Your honor, I rest my case.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

This is a flawed logic assessment.

The mechanics behind guitar playing is all about synchronicity. Both sides of the brain are constantly at play to make this happen. The brain must time the exact moment when the finger plucks the string to be in synch with the other finger pressing the right string at the right location on the fingerboard at the right time so it will sound clean. It doesn't matter what is the dominant hand. Once you learn an established and accepted physical position, the rest is up to the brain to retain the movements into what's called "muscular memory". Plus with time, the brain will separately process every learned synchronised movement and put it together in new ways, so you can play different songs, styles, etc.

To play an instrument like the guitar requires tremendous resources from raw brain power. When I think how much is required to correctly play the second movement of Agustin Barrios Mangorè "La Catedral" in terms of brain's raw power, I almost scare myself. However, I was able to play it as my "piece de resistance" when getting my diplom in classical music at the conservatory. At the ceremony, the diploms were handed to the alumni by the guest of honor, Paco de Lucia. I was eleven years old. What I mean by bthat is that it doesn't matterd how much it was. For the brain was, literally, "child's play", pun intended.

My closing point is: is "convention" had dictated to learn to play on a now called "left-hand" instrument, I'd today be playing with one of those. When you don't know how it's "supposed to be", it won't matter in the least how you do it. Most left-handed learn on right-handed instruments, and some of them continue even after acieve incredible levels of dexterity. Fx, the Yellow Jackets bass player, Jimmy Haslip. He plays a left-handed bass. However, the strings are put like in a right-handed instrument.

Your honor, I rest my case.

I agree with all of that, I guess a better way to have worded my question was why the hand with the least base dexterity is used for the job that (in most modern styles) requires more dexterity. Once you get passed building dexterity, it's like you said, synchronization is more important.

Dexterity makes a major difference when you first start out though, when I first picked up a guitar I tried a left handed one at first because that's what I was told to do. But when I started trying out right guitars because one day one of my fellow guitar players brought a really nice Les Paul (this was the first time I'd seen one in person) and I started to play it. Even though I'd been playing for about a month left handed, it felt so much easier doing it right handed. This was just my personal experience, I don't know how other leftys experience it. But I'd also be interested in knowing if any rightys have chosen to play left handed guitars for the same reason. I know Kurt Cobain did, but I don't know enough about him to know why he did it.

 

[Perry go round]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

In the case of Joe Perry, a LH guitar player that plays RH, he has commented on many ocasions that he started playing as a RH person because when he was a kid he started learning guitar with a book. The book taugh the positions of RH playing and he just followed those instructions. It was later on his life when he realised he had been learning in «the wrong way».

Enviado desde mi HUAWEI SCL-L01 mediante Tapatalk

 

[Clint 55]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

I disagree. Leftys are used to some degree of ambidexterity. And a lot get along fine playing guitar cross dominantly. But the picking hand requires the most dexterity and it's hard on your system to learn to concentrate too much dexterity on your weak hand. It confuses your system because the brain is set up to specialize its tasks and it pulls dexterity away from your dominant hand. Yes, leftys get along fine playing righty. But if a beginner came to me who was right handed and said he wanted to play lefty to be just like Cobain, I'd say bad idea. You'll get better if you use your dominant hand, aka the hand with most dexterity, the hand you write and most of the time throw with, to pick.

Edit: Hendrix is the most interesting case of mixed handedness because he wrote right handed but played left handed (duh). But he could have been a natural lefty and have been taught to write right handed. He threw left handed.

(Not really into the thesis of this article, just paragraph 2)
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/feb/25/jimi-hendrix-ambidexterity-virtuosity

 

[dave74]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

Also, it's not like we only strike the string with the right, we have to coordinate picking together with dampening to achieve the desired annunciation.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Why are left and right handed guitars seemingly backwards?

Edit: Hendrix is the most interesting case of mixed handedness because he wrote right handed but played left handed (duh). But he could have been a natural lefty and have been taught to write right handed. He threw left handed.

(Not really into the thesis of this article, just paragraph 2)
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/feb/25/jimi-hendrix-ambidexterity-virtuosity

Now that, I didn't know. But it doesn't really suprise me either. My dad was naturally left handed but was taught back in school to write right handed, but he still did everything else like a lefty.