Doing harder job with the weaker hand

[kkaarrll]

always wondered

 

[Alban]

I'm left handed and it has always made more sense to play a right-hand instrument for exactly the reasons of the OP.

 

[radiator6]

am a lefty who plays righty and to me at least it makes more sense to use dominent hant fretting as it uses all fingers while plucking really only uses two

 

[colantalas]

I remember reading an article on that a while ago. Apparently studies have been done on that and the results were something along the lines of:

While it doesn't matter which hands we use because both fretting and plucking are equally complex tasks (which is why there is no discernible difference between left-handed and right-handed violinists although they play exactly the same instruments), the initial tendency in most people to pluck with the stronger hand comes from the fact that we tend to "hold" with the weaker and "do" with the stronger hand, no matter which requires more strength.

Came to say this - it has to do with the relationship between the two hands. The weaker hand is for "setting up" an action, while the stronger hand "executes" the action. I wondered why I didn't grab a lefty bass when I started, thinking the same thing as the OP, but now I've been playing long enough that my left hand is strong enough for people to ask me in daily life if I'm lefty or ambidextrous when they see me do something with my left hand, and I don't think about it when playing at all.

 

[valkyrievf2x]

I'm a lefty that plays a right handed bass, and that feels natural to me. The right hand doesn't feel out of place. However, I play with my fingers. Even on a guitar, I play with my fingers. As soon as I get a pick, we have a host of issues... I thought I just couldn't use picks until I found a left handed guitar (kinda rare to see those in stores here in the south!), and then it was like magic! My left picking hand could move up and down the strings and felt RIGHT. MY now-fretting hand was a bit obtuse, but that is from lack of practice with that hand...

I am primarily a drum player, and I also play a right handed kit with right crossing over the left hand. Never occurred to me to set up a left aligned set or to play open handed.

I think a big reason is that the world is just so right oriented that we make ourselves try to fit into it, and end up disregarding our natural tendencies. So much so that when we actually have a left handed something, it feels weird (seriously.... those old fashioned school desks that have the arm rest on the right feel natural compared to the lefty ones; first time I sat in one of those in college I felt all sorts of strange...)

 

[shwashwa]

im lefty and play righty. i believe patitucci is this way also. i golf righty also. (ben hogan was lefty and golfed righty, also moe norman. left arm is the lead arm in golf for a righty)

 

[kleinenenten]

Tradition, and nothing more. I am a lefty who decided to learn righty many years ago for three reasons:

1. easier to find instruments.
2. easier to trade with others in a band
3. it made sense per OP

Glad I made that decision.

Ditto, but I was told I prefer right handed instruments. I was concerned about playing right handed as a lefty, so the sales guy handed me a bass and said to hold it. I instantly held it like a righty, it felt right, so I play right handed basses. Easy as that for me. I've always been slightly ambidextrous, though, so that probably helps.

 

[Slevage]

I'm just curious. Why do we use our main hand for picking and the secondary one for fretting? Picking, plucking and even slapping seem to be relatively simple kinds of motion in comparison to fretting that is way more complicated and requires much more stretch, strength, attention and sometimes even visual control. But all the right-handed players still pick with their main (right) hand and fret with secondary (left) one. Most of left-handed players also feel more comfortable when picking with their main (left) hand and look for lefty instruments.

The question is: why does it work this way? Why do we feel more comfortable doing harder job with the weaker hand? What are your ideas about it?

IMO the harder job is the plucking and everything else involved with the dominant hand.

 

[brianrost]

Go back a thousand years and ask the people who invented string instruments.

Violins, guitars, sitars, zithers...all designed for the right hand to pluck or bow and the left hand to fret.

 

[aaronious]

I don't know. But I like your logic and you've convinced me to try playing lefty now. I'm sure I'll still be proficiently mediocre though

 

[Jeff Bonny]

And yet I usually use my non-dominant hand for... Rhythm. Ahem.

Because yer dominant hand is on the mouse?

 

[Wandering Bass]

I was told by a very experienced (he would have said "ancient") luthier that the left/right positions have nothing to do with the modern bass or guitar, but are an artifact of precedent string instruments such as the violin. When using a bow you require the hand that has more finesse and subtlety, and that is generally the dominant hand. The fret left and play right balance came from that.

I assumed he was right until I started looking into the history of instruments and learned that our modern guitar-family instruments did not evolve from the orchestra, rather from a parallel development line dating back further than we can trace. We know ancient Egyptians used picks to play a stringed instrument with fingerboard, and ancient Turks had fretted fingerboard. Both are displayed in period artwork as being played with left hand doing the fingering and right hand plucking or strumming.

I think we do it this way today simply because it's how it's always been done, and this tradition pre-dates Leo Fender by a few thousand years

 

[SanDiegoHarry]

Because yer dominant hand is on the mouse?

<rimshot>

 

[elgecko]

It seems fairly arbitrary but I argue that conventional right hand configuration mimics the piano with left hand on the bass side and vice-versa.

 

[Clef_de_fa]

It seems fairly arbitrary but I argue that conventional right hand configuration mimics the piano with left hand on the bass side and vice-versa.

So you play chord with your agile hand and play the melody with your rythm hand ... counter intuitive if you ask me.

Since I play left handed, my more agile hand is on the melody and my rythm hand is on the bass side playing chord and feel like the reverse would be difficult

 

[Ant Illington]

I'm just curious. Why do we use our main hand for picking and the secondary one for fretting? Picking, plucking and even slapping seem to be relatively simple kinds of motion in comparison to fretting that is way more complicated and requires much more stretch, strength, attention and sometimes even visual control. But all the right-handed players still pick with their main (right) hand and fret with secondary (left) one. Most of left-handed players also feel more comfortable when picking with their main (left) hand and look for lefty instruments.

The question is: why does it work this way? Why do we feel more comfortable doing harder job with the weaker hand? What are your ideas about it?

Like many have said or implied, the finesse of plucking, rhythmically and with subtle varying pressures, mutings and follow thru, is much more complicated than fretting where one can reasonably do ALOT with very little varying technique/pressure.

There is a parallel in hockey. I'm right-handed in everything but I play hockey left-handed. I always assumed that it was because I first picked up a stick like I saw my dad hold his guitar, the long end (neck of guitar/blade of stick) pointed to the left. After I grew up and talked to really good hockey player about my leftiness he said its very common and, actually, possibly the preferred/smart way (right hand dominants playing lefty hockey). The left hand/arm is merely power which any arm can learn relatively easy and the right hand is all of your control/finesse which isn't easily learned with the non-dominant hand. So its much easier to teach your weak arm/hand relatively gross strength rather than finesse. Anything can be done, of course...