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Lefties why didn't you start playing a righty?

#101
I think lefties should be made to be played uncomfortably and unnaturally!!!

ALL LEFTY GUITARS MUST BE BURNED AND THEY SHOULD HAVE TO MAKE THE EXTRA UNNESECCARY EFFORT TO PLAY RIGHT HANDED!!!

DOWN WITH LEFTIES!!!
 
#102
danomite64 said:
I don't see the point of this discussion at all. If a student wants to learn on a lefty instrument, it's that students choice to make. A good instructor would try to help that student find the best instrument to fit his needs, not try to talk him out of his decision.
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So let me get this straight. Don't give advice to a n00b who doesn't know anything about the guitar or bass yet? :eyebrow:

When I purchased my first guitar, the sales person informed me that I could probably learn on a standard issue righty then explained how they don't stock lefty instruments, I'd need to pay up front, no returns, no trades, etc. If I couldn't play a righty, they were still willing to order stuff, only if I paid 100% up front.

His advice worked quite well and I eventually became a decent musician. As a bassist, I don't think I would have progressed very much because most of my early basses did not have a lefty version available. Had I not found the comfortable and easy playing Cirrus, would I have stuck with bass? No clue.
 
#104
I've said enough. Those who bother reading my posts while leaving out the biased, emotional stuff are clear on what I'm trying to say.

Thanks


rickon said:
There is no predisposition for a left hand to fret or a right hand to pick or vice versa. Why is it that my dominant hand(right) only picks when my "weak" hand(left) does the "more difficult" fret work? Maybe because I first picked up the more readily available righty guitars and basses.

It seems so natural now but could be I'd a shredding fool if I fretted with my strong hand. Excellent point KenToby.

And oh yeah, those Yellowjackets guys. They play upside down because that's how Dick Dale does it.
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#108
iamthebassman said:
Sure, and we all throw a baseball with our right hand too. That's why they don't make baseball gloves for lefties, correct?
Dumbest thread of the month(so far).
KILL RIGHTY!!
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again, you completely miss my point. Throwing a baseball's a relatively simple activity, i think less than 5 muscles are involved. As such, handedness plays a big part in determining which hand you grab the ball with and consequently which hand you throw it with.

Guitaring and bassing, however, are much more complicated actions and i cannot believe that handedness for them has been preprogrammed into the human mind.

Re: the french horn, Is it that the right hand does some really cool stuff inside the bell, like changing the tone?
 
#111
ehque said:
again, you completely miss my point. Throwing a baseball's a relatively simple activity, i think less than 5 muscles are involved. As such, handedness plays a big part in determining which hand you grab the ball with and consequently which hand you throw it with.

Guitaring and bassing, however, are much more complicated actions and i cannot believe that handedness for them has been preprogrammed into the human mind.

Re: the french horn, Is it that the right hand does some really cool stuff inside the bell, like changing the tone?
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So handedness determines which hand you grab the ball with but in no way figures into which way feels best playing a guitar? You're not making sense. Obviously your "thinking" applies to left-handed drummers too. There would be no reason to set up a drum kit "backwards".
What if I play bass left-handed because that's what feels "right" to me? Doesn't that count for something?
And perhaps the reason they make lefty basses is because people buy them.
I don't see any point in trying to apply rules to making music. Why try to box in a musician? There are players who do things different than you do. So? What do you care?
 
#113
KenToby, with all due respect, I think you and your students might be happier if you didn't teach left-handed students.

My wife is left-handed. There is no question about her dexterity: she types 120 wpm and has a BFA from Tufts, in Boston. She is also reasonably ambidextrous: she and I are both artists, and early in our marriage we competed with each other in using the non-dominant hand to draw a subject from life. She easily beat me, every time. Her drawings, done with her right hand, were far superior to the ones I made with my left.

A few years ago I decided to teach her to play the electric bass. Naturally, the only bass on hand was my right-handed bass.

Now, keep in mind that this is a person with great fine motor control, and also a person who plays piano (she took lessons as a child, and can still sightread, even though she has neglected music for art over the years).

Soon after we started, she expressed great frustration at having to play the bass "backwards" and the lessons soon ended. Had she had a left-handed instrument available, she might well have continued and gone on to master it to at least some degree.

As it was, the experiment ended in failure! Note that she met all your criteria: she was a beginner who had never played an instrument (other than a piano), she had no preconceptions, and she had, in addition, a degree of ambidexterity.

In other words, my own experience is completely at odds with your speculations.
 
#115
I respectfully question posts that state personal experiences as being fact. The fact that left handed "uncle Fred" or "mom" or "dad" played one way or another, does nothing to disprove the true fact that right or left handed playing is a learned skill. Once this skill is ingrained, to unlearn it is very difficult if not impossible. I'm not asking any one to un-learn or re-learn their playing position.

Thanks
Vandelay said:
I read your posts and responded with my own experiences.

So is anyone who disagrees with your basic premise being "biased" and "emotional"? :eyebrow:
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#116
rickon said:
So how do y'all feel about the difference between fretting and picking? Is either more difficult?

Seems to be a correlation between the weak hand and fretting. Hmm...
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It took me a while to get picking down, but I found fretting to be fairly easy with my dominant hand. I'm lucky that my dominant hand is much more flexible and much stronger than my right hand.
 
#118
rickon said:
So it seems, spade2you, that if you are a natural lefty then you play a righty bass. Or a lefty bass if you are a righty. Correct?
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Yup. I'm a lefty playing righty. When I started out, hanging my guitar from both directions felt equally awkward. I mostly chose playing right handed becase I wasn't 100% sure I was going to keep with it and their no-return policy on lefties seemed like too much of a liability.
 
#119
I'm left handed, but play bass right handed. I chose right because that's what was available at the time, and I had no predisposition to play either left or right handed. By the time I actually tried a left handed bass, it felt very akward - because I had already learned to play a righty.
 
#120
RE: this thread

absurd, aimless, fruitless, futile, going nowhere*, impotent, inane, inconsequential, ineffective, ineffectual, insignificant, irrelevant, meaningless, nongermane, nonsensical, not pertinent, on treadmill*, powerless, purportless, remote, senseless, silly, stupid, trivial, unavailing, uninteresting, unnecessary, unproductive, unprofitable, useless, vague, vain, worthless
 

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