The Lefty/Righty debate

Jeanious

Hey all, was just thinkin about this today.

is there many/any people out there who can play guitar or bass or that, left and right-handed?

Ive heard your man from the Thrills does it but dunno.

I play proper lefty, can play a bit of upside down lefty too (y'know, a right-handed guitar left-handedly) but not really.

Actually what about that? Does anyone play upside down as a matter of course either?

bucks

I was doing a sound check years back in college as part of the course and our tutor got a few lads from another class to play the instruments for us and have a bit of a jam.

Anyway all we could give to the guitarist was a right handed guitar, problem was he was a lefty, he turned the guitar around with the strings still set for a righty and played away like he would on a left handed guitar with not a bother in the world, couldnt believe how good he was able to play it.

Jeanious

sweet!

Was he just strummin away like, not a bother?
It seems dick dale lives in that upside tunin all the time.

Ya'd think itd be likin writin backwards or somethin wouldnt ya?!

Jeanious

Jesus....christ! :eek:

http://www.compfused.com/directlink/603

Giblet

That's kinda....crap!

miju

im a lefty guitar player myself and i play just as well with my right hand, i think its just something that leftys pick up more so than rightys because most of the time they are around right handed guitars rather than left handed ones cos there are more of em.

in my case i have a group of about 12 close friends who play guitar so when we're hanging out (unless its my house) theres only ever righty guitars to play, so you just adapt over the course of a few years but saying that there are some things becuase of fingering positions that are INCREDIBLY difficult to play upside down/properly a most recent example being dazed and confused from zepplin i've nearly got my head around playing it upside down but its just damn hard

just before i finish my waffle i think it's a thing of conditioning your brain to think in reverse or something because outta my 12 friends who play guitar only 4 of em can play my lefty guitar and the rest of em cant for the life of em do it and they are all fairly competent musicians

anyway waffle over

Jeanious

same here really, though it sounds like you can play quite well upside-down!
i can pretty much bar an E and move it up and down, but for some reason rightys can never even comprehend somethin like that when they have my guitar (lefty).

On a side note, have ya ever played a mandolin or banjo or that which was strung GDAE? so itd be like the right way round but....the...wrong...octaves or somethin?


.......my brain!!

[edit] sorry, do you mean ya play upside-down or properly right-handed?
I misread that there i think!

miju

i meant play right handed guitar upside down and play with my right hand also (something that was VERY VERY VERY difficult to do)

never played a mandolin played a right banjo but only a few chords on it is all i know

Jeanious

And was it easy to get the shapes down?
Or are banjos even tuned GDAW?

Itd be so sweet to be able to play guitar properly both ways....then maybe both ways upside-down too! What a rock legend you'd become!!

Was thinkin about tryin to learn proper righty at some stage. Id say the hardest part about guitar when your startin is not knowin anythin about it (shapes, scales etc) but now that ya know all that, i dont reckon itd take *too* long to apply it.

Speakin of dazed and confused, dya mean ya can play the bow bit upside down an all?! :eek:

miju

im working on it at the mo, its incredibly hard to train your other hand and no matter what you know on the guitar it only slightly helps when it comes to training your other hand its a bit too complicated to explain but its basically like starting to play all over again your fingers are stiff and slow and you have to force them into positions of chords and chages take ages and strumming is a nightmare and it can be 10million times more frustrating than learning guitar for the 1st time because you know you can play it and you know how it should sound and it just takes a long time to get right but then once it clicks yer laughing

Jeanious

yeah good point actually.
Whereas when ya first learn the guitar and nail an A power chord its like "RAAWWKKK!!".

As far as i know people tend to have better rhythm in their good hand too, i deffo found that myself anyway. When i was about 10 i got a few "normal" guitar lessons: couldnt do it at all, then at about 15 decided to try it by myself left-handed and it just happened.

Thinkin about it too, the whiners say "just play it right handedly, sure youll have an advantage cos your good hand will be doin all the hard work anyway". If that was the case though, ya can bet your life that the rightys would have started playin it the other way round centuries ago!