handedness (left or right)

A :-)

The reason that women's buttons are reversed is that when buttons were introduced to Britain as functional parts of clothing (they had long been nothing but decorative), they were only to be found on expensive clothes (buttons were, like many such things, very expensive) and were only available to well-to-do people. As such women all had maids to fasten their clothes for them, they reversed the buttons on women's clobber, as most maids were right handed. So, really, both men's and women's clothing has been designed for right handers.

I didn't know that. it explains everything.

And when was the last time you saw a left handed piano? You won't.

Actually....

I remember someone telling me that famous left handed pianist had one of these built for him to use. :lol: My mind boggles imagining it though.

I think it's just easier for me to teach my left hand how to fret properly than it is for me to teach my right hand how to keep time and strum a proper rhythm. Either way, the idea of playing lefty gives me the heebie jeebies.

How about left-handed violins? There's no reason you couldn't play one left handed but I've never seen one in an orchestra in the violin section. Maybe they're banned from orchestras as they'd be poking their neighbours eye out with the bow. :D

Now a couple of questions for experienced lefties who play left handed. When you see chord and scale boxes/ diagrams etc shown for right handers, is it easy to make the mental adjustment? Does it become second nature, to the extent that if you saw them written left handed, you'd have to convert them back to the usual right handed way to make sense of them?
I'm asking because when I make software tools/ trainers for guitarists for my web site. I'm always conscious of neglecting left handers. I often wonder if I should make reverse copies of some of them for lefties - or if that would just be a lot of work for little gain.

Slightly OT, but a guitar shop opened in Liverpool earlier this year (I think, maybe 2008 instead) that specialises in leftie guitars. They also specialise in brands like Eastwood that are less common. They stock a few rightie guitars (I had to try the rightie Eastwood Tuxedo, heh heh), but it's mainly all leftie stock. The owners are a couple of lefties who found buying guitars a nightmare given how few shops stock more than two vaguely decent leftie axes at any given time. Real nice guys, too. I thoroughly recommend them (Slater Street, just off Bold Street, Liverpool).

I'm a lefty who works in Graphic Design where there's a disproportionate number of lefties.
If I'm using my Wacom tablet to draw or retouch I use my left hand. If I'm using a mouse to do the same, I use the right. Wacky.
Almost all lefty designers I know are the same. Maybe only one in 10 is a true lefty, using the mouse with their left.
:)

I play a lefthanded guitar. For me, that always felt the most "natural" way for me to play. I write and eat with my left hand but tend to be right handed in sports (throwing, batting, etc). I'm sure most people could learn to play righty or lefty but I'd recommend going with what feels proper to you - how would you naturally strum an "air guitar" (or broomstick, etc)? For me, it was more about the dexterity in my strumming hand than in my fretting hand.

Play lefty because of strumming and fingerpicking. It's easier for me to play right handed guitars upside down than to strum with the right hand. Probably could if I had to, but don't want to find out at this point.

When it comes to reading chord charts and fretboard maps, I have no problem reading them "right handed," probably because all the chord charts I read while learning were from "piano / guitar" books and were all the same way. Backwards charts actually drive me crazy because they look wrong. I think it's more important to go with a standard that's used universally than catering to left handed readers. Lefties are smart enough to adapt. :wink:

Peace

Play lefty because of strumming and fingerpicking. It's easier for me to play right handed guitars upside down than to strum with the right hand. Probably could if I had to, but don't want to find out at this point.

I feel the same way about playing "left handed" as a lefty. It's too late for me to even think about switching to playing "left handed". I wonder if it was an impediment in learning? Would it have been easier if I had started playing "left handed"? Will it always be an impediment? All really hard to say. I did spend a fair bit of time working on my picking and strumming skills - was it more than I would have had to do if I played the other way around?

I am planning to get a left handed amplifier anytime soon. It will sound even better with my lefty guitar. :lol:

When it comes to reading chord charts and fretboard maps, I have no problem reading them "right handed," probably because all the chord charts I read while learning were from "piano / guitar" books and were all the same way. Backwards charts actually drive me crazy because they look wrong. I think it's more important to go with a standard that's used universally than catering to left handed readers. Lefties are smart enough to adapt. :wink:

Peace

Thanks, David. That's exactly the info I was looking for. It'll save me a lot of work too :D

most here know i'm a lefty who plays righty. it never really seemed odd to me as there were no left handed guitars around back when i started.
when i first started my business tho, i had to have a left handed drafting machine shipped in from Tokyo, that really made my life easier...

As a right hander, I wondered that myself when I was a beginner, until I turned my guitar upside down and tried to play left handed. I could manage to hold a couple of easy (upside down) chords with my right hand, but strumming them with my left hand was a disaster. I found, to my surprise, that it's actually my right hand that normally does the hardest work when playing. The amount of control and precision required to hit the right strings to get just the right volume, tone, timing and feel is greater than targetting and holding down notes on the fretboard in sequence. I realised then "Ah, that's why we hold the guitar the way we do."

+1 to Fretsource's explanation. That's exactly how it seemed to me too.

I didn't start trying to play until I was in my late 50s so my hands were stiff and inflexible, to say the least. It took a lot of time to get the fingers of my left hand moving around the basic chord shapes, but it was still a relatively straightforward task - just repeat the pattern a few hundred times until the shapes stick. However, the right hand turned out to be a different proposition altogether, because it's where the majority of the real artistry resides - controlling the rhythm, expression and all the issues of touch and timing that make the difference between plodding and flying.... So, as Fretsource says having my dominant hand on the job feels like a good choice, and I don't think that it will ever stop developing a broader range of skills (at least I hope not).... :)

It's interesting attempting play other instruments too, because the challenges are different. With piano the instrument itself is quite easy to play (just press a key and you get the note - no buzzing or muting because you're fingering isn't up to scratch yet). What makes it hard is that both hands are doing a very similar job and it takes a lot of work before you can get your head and hands around reading and playing two lines. But even then, the all important melody line is more often put in the right hand, with the higher registers cutting through the sound mix more clearly. So, as Alan says, pianos can be seen as favouring the right hand. If I'm having bash on the clarinet, then both hands do a very similar job, and the mouth gets some of the trickiest aspects. But, one way or another, it all seems trainable and becoming proficient with both hands is achievable.

Cheers,

Chris

this is very interesting.

i do see what you all say - about the picking hand actually being more important than i thought, for delicate accenting and accuracy - but i have gone so far down the road, my left (better) hand, would not be a patch on my right (wrong) hand, for picking.

i guess like somebody else on here said, although we all have one hand better than the other, we dont have a "bad" hand, we are all capable, - with practice, of turning either hand into a picking or fretting hand - it will just take time. and as all of us here can play guitar already - we all understand how alien fretting or picking felt to our hands when we first started learning the "normal" way.

the guitar is a rhythm instrument. you can play a simple left hand part and make it sound good with good rhythm, but if your rhythm is bad, you can be playing bach and it'll be painful to hear.