LeftyBassist.com

This awesome forum we call home even gets a mention :

http://www.bassplayer.com/artists/1171/ ... paws/26684

Super cool!

Noticed this comment left by a reader there:

(edited down slighty)



I see this perspective shared occasionally. And every time I hear it I just can not help but wonder that if this is true then why wouldn't millions of bonafide, 100% righties play lefty guitars so that they too can unlock this hidden advantage??

Agreed... as we all know, this is a common view from many well-meaning folks on TB. All I can say is that I can operate an electron microscope with my eyes closed, but I cannot for the life of me play a right handed guitar....

Years ago (1963) I started out playing on a right handed guitar. I had been working at it for about a month and was just getting comfortable at very basic playing. One of the top guitar players in a very popular band at school out of the blue invited me over to play with him on afternoon. I was blown away. Shortly after I got there I mentioned that exact point - I felt that I had an advantage being left handed. "Why are you playing right handed" he asked. I was puzzled I hadn't ever seen a left handed guitar and didn't know it was an option. He made me put down the guitar and tap out a beat on my legs. After watching me for a bit he told me that my natural rhythm was in my left hand and that I should be playing left handed. He explained when he began playing the first thing is instructor had him do was tap out a beat to see which way he should play. He explained that fretting can be taught, but natural rhythm was important for the picking hand. So he insisted that I restring the guitar right then. I wasn't going to argue with a well respected hot shot guitar player, so I did. I had every intention of switching back when I got home, I had worked too hard to get to the point of being comfortable playing right handed. However, after a few hours of working with him, to my surprise, I was doing everything left handed that had taken a month to learn right handed. So I figured there must be something to the theory and I didn't switch back. Don't know if there is really any truth to the theory, but it seemed to work for me.

My daughter and I are both left handed, she has passed my skills as a musician years ago she plays piano, flute, piccolo guitar and bass. She noted that she feels most comfortable on guitar and bass as playing a left handed bass or guitar is just more natural where on piano, flute and piccolo she had to learn to adapt. Often on piano you can hear that she is more natural with the left hand.

Good story, and it makes perfect sense to me. Rhythm is everything. Of course, rhythm can be taught. But if you have a natural rhythmic sense playing a certain way you're already ahead of the game vs. having to learn that additional skill.

When I first took up guitar (age 10?), I went for my first lesson at a local music store. I had my mother's righty guitar strung righty (she was a lefty too and had just bought a guitar but never bothered to learn guitar or realize that the guitar was wrong for her so it sat dormant). I sat down with the teacher and instinctively turned the guitar upside down. "What are you doing?" the teacher said, "Turn the guitar back around". "But it feels better this way," I replied, to which he said, "What do you know about how it should feel? You don't even know how to play yet." That was my one and only lesson and it turned me off from learning to play until I was in high school and formed a band with some of my friends. My first bass was a righty Westbury Track II flipped and strung lefty.

Don't ever mess with someone's instinctive natural feel, IMO. It makes the learning process and patience for learning that much easier.

I agree with the sentiments above about rhythm being in the dominant hand.

I took a few years off bass in my early 20s and gave away or sold all my gear. When I picked bass back up, I decided to relearn righty. It was fine because I didn't make any attempt to play with other people and I was focusing on pieces that were more melodic than rhythmic. Life got in the way again, so I sold all my stuff.

When I decided to start playing yet again, I knew that I would have to play lefty. Even though I could play complicated pieces right handed (e.g., I learned half of Bach for Bass both left and right handed), my timing was non-existent. Good timing is challenging enough without handicapping yourself. I, too, tap rhythms with my left hand as the anchor.

The other funny thing: a couple years after quitting as a righty, I would mentally play pieces that I had learned as a righty, but in my head I played them lefty.

As someone who owns every issue of Bassplayer magazine, this is pretty neat to me.

Great to see Arni's efforts get the nod too.

I believe this (rhythm being in the dominant hand) has much to do with why I disagree with the conclusion they jump to which seems largely based on the idea that the fretting hand is the most important, "busier", precise, etc. Implying the picking/plucking hand is less important.

I disagree with that and think it's shortsighted. I think there's a helluva lot more going on with the picking hand than meets the eye and that the one hand is just as important as the other.

If I'm wrong then millions of actual righty players should avail themselves of the overlooked knowledge and swap their righty guitars for leftys. Unleash their full potential and take their playing to a much higher level.

I'm pretty sure we all start playing "right-handed" unless there's a lefty guitar hanging around. I would guarantee that the vast majority of we lefties "tried" the righty thing, and then, like me, switched it over and said"that's much better."

Like we've discussed before, I'm right-handed in everything I do, except playing bass and swinging a baseball bat.

pete

I jacked up my left shoulder doing BMX silliness in the 90s. As a result, it can't really support the weight of a bass. I found this out the hard way when I got my first bass, a BC Rich Warlock Bronze - thick as a phone book, as light as a truckload of timber - and couldn't play it for more than five minutes with a strap before searing, burning pain shot through my shoulder and neck area.

I flipped it backwards and hung it over my right shoulder and for the most part, it was fine. Traded the Warlock away and eventually took the plunge and committed to lefty. My dominant hand on the fretboard most definitely is a notable advantage, but at the same time I can clearly feel that my left hand plucking (especially picking) is holding me back. The more I play, the more accurate I become, but I can't help but think that I'd progress much much faster if I could play righty.

Ah well.