Why Are Some Lefties Playing Guitars Right-handedly?

[vurt]

i didn't really make a choice, i began with my uncles banjo, so it was right handed.

[Bombadil]

i didn't really make a choice, i began with my uncles banjo, so it was right handed.

Explains a few things....

[Aloysius]

Your uncles ''banjo''. We see ...

[benheman]

Wonder why Jimi Hendrix played guitar left-handed if he was right-handed! ??

[Aloysius]

Drugs.

[vurt]

i didn't really make a choice, i began with my uncles banjo, so it was right handed.

Explains a few things....

[vurt]

Your uncles ''banjo''. We see ...

also

[vurt]

Drugs.

and finally, yes please

[Aloysius]

[BMoore]

Warez.

and finally, yes please

And it would be a ban fest here.
Go figure.

[vurt]

on fb, calling someone a "thundercunt" can get you banned for a bit.

[jancivil]

Yeah, no.

I was, here, once, for the mere "c**ts" tho. It weren't even off-topic but quite on point.

[donkey tugger]

[Hink]

As a guitarist, I ultimately sought to do as little as possible with the right hand. The right hand is not necessarily primary, except for this sort of mandolin-like approach, where picking every note has a certain energy. DiMeola, McLaughlin. The other side of the spectrum is Allan Holdsworth and legato, he would rather have become a saxophonist. Or I want a vocal kind of a thing. With high gain, on an electric, one can very nearly get away with all left hand. That being said, I studied classical guitar in order to have some kind of control over a polyphonic instrument. There was no tapping, if you get my drift. What you say about the keyboard, all to do with the left hand on guitar, before the extended thing came into awareness, Stanley Jordan the more obvious proponent.


But I think the right hand of a right-handed guitarist as the product of the part of the brain which supposedly the analytic and mathematical properties belong to is clueless, about the guitar anyway.

with the exception of the first sentence I feel the same way, my only exception to the first sentence is a personal thing that easily could just be less important for most than me. I dont tap, or I should say I haven't done so in many years but there is one thing I spent a lot of time learning with the right hand that is important to my pleasure of playing. That is harmonic squeals and the harmonic positions using the right hand. I get squeals in several ways, pinching, laying my thumb lightly over the string, palm muting and for other harmonics tones while doing hammer-ons with my left hand l light drag a finger or thumb up or down the strings and also pal muting.

As a result my right hand placement is key to a lot of tones I get, in fact really the range of travel is from the bridge to about the 14th fret.

As a kid like you I started in grade school on the trumpet (5th grade), I didn't care for it nor was I cut out for it. In my school system you started an instrument in 5th grade if you had the aptitude (dont remember how that was measured) or 4th grade if you wanted to play the violin. I was chomping at the bit and wanted to play the violin, the school said yes but my mother said I didn't have the motor coordination to do so. She based this on my very poor penmanship (to this day it's bad) and I have wondered since my college days when I was first introduced to the whole right/left brain theory if perhaps I was a forced righty. Your comment is basically how I felt, save for the classical training.

My mother stopped all my lessons at 13 years old when she accused my guitar teacher of stringing me along by teaching me things that were useless. Just for the record one of those things was blues bars. (roll not intended for you but my misguided mom)

[Bombadil]

I had a guitar when I was 12, but one of the tuners was broken. I was not helped to get it replaced, nor given any encouragement. When we moved, one of the movers asked for it and I said sure. To this day, I am not certain if it was a Sigma or a Martin. I'd like to think it wasn't a Martin. I was prevented from learning the guitar for a while because of my parents' experience with my older brother (they thought the Beatles/Stones and guitars made him drop out of school, drugs, rebellion, and didn't think to look at themselves). They didn't want the same for me, so they refused until I bought one with my own money when I was 14. By that point, my parents were divorced, and nobody cared what I did.

I have wondered, occasionally, what my playing would be like if I had started lefty. I can fingerpick decently, but I can't Travis pick. I WANT to Travis pick, but can't muster the motivation to unlearn then relearn how to play. I know that being able to do that would open huge vistas in my playing (I'd like to be able to do stuff like Steve Hackett from Genesis, Steve Howe from Yes, or Mark Knopfler). I don't think I'd have it any easier if I was doing that with my left hand, but who knows?