Originally posted by Ray Parker
The truth of the matter is, and I think it was mentioned earlier, that when you are begginning the instrument both hands are ********. There is no advantage to having either hand in either place, in regards to being a righty or a lefty.
No! No! No! If you've never played drums, sit behind a kit and reverse it for a left-handed setup. Now try to play on it. You should instantly realize that it's not right, even if you have no prior knowledge of the instrument, thus no muscle memory. Your statement is naive at best, or it denotes a weak innate predisposition to the instrument (which does not translate into potentially poor musicianship... just a slower instinctual start on your initial grasp of the instrument)
Originally posted by Pete OLeary
Plenty of guitarists play this way, from Albert King to Kurt Cobain.
Not Cobain. The only famous lefty guitarists I know who played with the strings in reverse order are Dick Dale, Albert King and Otis Rush. My Dad does it too. Blame it on laziness or nonchalance.
re: Ray Parker's general attitude towards musical handedness, well, that's still irritating me after all those years of dealing with such an inexplicably stubborn and uninformed view.
It's a cerebral/ergonomical/positional issue. In the case of piano and wind instruments (except flute-type instruments, where "wrong-handed" players are, interestingly, a relatively common sight), the ergonomical and positional issues do not apply as much since there is not such a steep directional bias in the way the instrument has to be physically approached (a piano is a pretty symmetric beast!) Also, the hands are less
mutually dependent while playing those instruments. Stringed instruments are strongly biased, i.e. one hand generally has to
support the other (one of them frets, the other plucks) rather than having both hands work equally. Since your strong hand is generally better at keeping time***, having it strum/pluck the guitar/bass only makes sense, contrary to the popular belief that the fretting hand has to "work harder" during the learning process. Just ask a classical guitarist's opinion on the matter.
Like many lefty players, I first picked up the instrument and instantly knew that the neck had to rest on my right side. I remember my first day with a (righty) guitar - I put on the Beatles' "Day Tripper", tuned the low E string to the first note of the song and learned the main riff. I tried to play the "correct" way and the "lefty" way, for 2 days straight. My brain & left-hand fingers could not work in tandem to allow me to play the riff with the neck on my left side, but I could play it perfectly with it resting on my right side and my right-hand fingers on the fretboard. End of story.
I envy lefties who can play the traditional way, but unlike what Ray Parker & others would like us to believe, "neutral-handedness" is not a universal truth when first picking up an instrument.
*** Try this simple exercise: lay your hands flat on a table and tap the table with one of your thumbs, while trying to keep a quick and steady beat. Repeat with the other thumb. See, one is more efficient than the other. Now do it with both thumbs at once... your strong hand will adapt to the weak one so they can keep the beat, and inversely, the weak hand will benefit from the strong hand's guidance. That's how left-handed piano players can somewhat easily overcome the counter-intuitive key placement, better than a "hardcore" left-handed guitarist/bassist would be able to fare if he/she were forced to play a right-handed instrument the traditional way. Better hand = better rhythm = handedness.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Apologies for any grammatical oddity; English is not my mother tongue.
