Do not allow us right handed folks to corrupt you and make you think that you must adapt to our right handed ways! Embrace the left hand and get a left handed guitar. Let him try a guitar of each type, but I don't think he will have any problem learning and playing a right-handed guitar. My brother is left handed but he started playing a right-handed bass some years ago, and since then he has been able to play some guitar and uke too with no problem.
Also, as you pointed out, it will be easier for you to teach him and easier for him to jam with someone's guitar. But if you can, let him try a left-handed, so he can judge what suits him better, and if the difference isn't noticeable, I'd go right-handed for the benefits explained before.
I'm left-handed but I've played guitar right-handed for decades, reaching a rather competent level in classical guitar before I quit at my 20s because I got bored with classical guitar repertoire. If holding your guitar left-handed feels more natural, go with leftie, whatever the cost. Yes, even if you like to play slurs and legatos. That's because you'll always have a better command on your dominant hand.
This affects the rhythm and precision, the things that in the end make your playing sound good or bad. I'm personally learning electric guitar and occasionally thinking about learning to play it left-handed. Especially because I still tend to strum air guitar like a southpaw. A friend told me about a show she attended the other night: one guitarist, playing solo. He is left handed and plays a 'normal' guitar upside down ie the pick guard is above the sound hole and not below , but the strings are strung 'normally' in other words, the high E is on the top side of the guitar whereas the low E is on the bottom side.
As far as I know, Jimi Hendrix used to play a normal guitar but would restring so that the low E as on the top and high E on the bottom. The obvious advantage of this setup is that the guitarist can play any guitar that he comes across.
The obvious disadvantage is that most learning material has to be read in a mirror fashion. Apparently he strums upwards as opposed to the normal down strum. I am a lefty and play righty guitar.
I can finger pick ok and am learning alternating bass finger style and also singing to strumming. The finger picking felt mind bending at first but is getting easier. I picked up a lefthander guitar the other day and it felt super weird.
My left hand is however much stronger and more dexterous than my right. Sometimes I wonder if whoever invented guitar had it backwards, or maybe they were a lefty embittered by the righty dominated world and took revenge by making them play backwards. Driving with a stick shift feels good being a lefty, I get to hold the wheel with my dominant hand, and it would feel pretty bizarre the other way around, like in England.
Albert King. Kristopher Roe Of The Ataris. Gurrumul Yunupingu. But playing a right handed guitar, left handed, with the strings rearranged should be no problem.
What ever is most comfortable. Also, I'd suggest learning on a nylon classical guitar. Jimmy Hendrix played a right handed guitar left handed his whole life, it is possible but like everything else it will need some practice. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?
Learn more. Is it possible for a left hander to learn guitar right handed? Ask Question. Asked 10 years ago. Active 5 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 98k times. I am looking to get a guitar for my step son. He is largely left handed, but currently he plays the drums right handed without any difficulty. Would the same apply with learning guitar from scratch?
Improve this question. Mongus Pong Mongus Pong 1 1 gold badge 2 2 silver badges 5 5 bronze badges. Many guitars are symmetric and you can just reverse the strings with caveats, see the next comment. My guitar has an easily-exchanged nut and reversible bridge. MatthewRead the notches in the nut are sized for conventional stringing. Also the bridge is set up to give the right intonation for the conventional strings.
Many acoustic guitars have non-adjustable bridges. Thanks for pointing, the answers there were very helpful, I guess it is just a matter of trying out and finding which one is best, although my main concern was, like many pointed out, the strumming, which I felt could be easier with the left hand. I guess I'll be experimenting with it very soon. Don't forget every violinist learns to play the same regardless of handedness!
IIRC, Jimi Hendrix was left-handed, but used to play his right-handed electric guitars with left-handed stringing. Even such asymmetrical guitars as a Fender Stratocaster. Guitars come in right-handed and left-handed varieties. Most people who are interested in learning guitar simply go out and buy one—the right-handed variety—without necessarily even knowing that there is another kind. Beginners spend quite a lot of time struggling to put together chords, to learn scales and sequences of notes, and to perform other techniques like bends and hammer-ons.
These are all performed with the fretting hand, which is the left hand on a right-hand guitar. So it can be hard for the beginner to see why the other hand—the plucking hand— is normally considered the dominant hand in guitar playing.
And playing the guitar is fairly complex. Another way to think of it is that the fret hand is dominant in the beginning.
As I mentioned above, one of the easiest ways to identify the orientation of a guitar is to look at the pickguard. On a left handed guitar, it is on the left, and on a right handed model it should be on the right when facing you. Another part you can investigate is the nut. This is the thin strip of material near the headstock end of the fretboard which holds the strings in position. The previous owner may have flipped the nut degrees or installed a new one , so this method might not be totally accurate.
A better indicator might be the position of the strap pegs the little metal feet that you slot your guitar strap over. On most guitars, the rear peg will be in the center of the body, but the front peg will be on the top side. If your front strap peg is located on the bottom half of the body then your guitar has likely been flipped. If the strap peg has been moved to the correct position by the previous owner, they may have filled in the old hole and refinished it.
So once again, this visual aid might not be a completely reliable source of information. You will find these on the top side of the fretboard, facing you when in a playing position. If they are on the bottom side then your guitar has likely been flipped. When I bought my upside-down right-handed guitar it was the side markers facing the floor that ultimately revealed what the guitar actually was.
On an acoustic guitar, the saddle is the thin strip of material on top of the bridge on which the strings sit. One of its functions is to correctly set the intonation on the instrument. To do this the saddle is set at an angle to slightly alter the length of each string. If it is the opposite way around, then that is a good sign that your guitar has been flipped.
Check out the diagram above to see the correct angles on both left and right handed models. A very small minority of guitarists play guitar in a left handed orientation, but with the strings upside down! These players tend to have a mix of guitars, some being regular right handed guitars which they hold upside down, and some being left handed guitars which they string upside down. This method of playstyle makes sense because it means that as a left handed guitarist, you can walk into a guitar store and play almost anything in the store upside down of course.
However, the downside is that there are almost zero learning materials available for this style of play, so these players are pretty much on their own when it comes to figuring out how to learn to play!
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