What’s a left-handed person to do when it comes to buying and learning how to play a guitar? Should one force adaptation to right-handed instruments, or should a left-handed guitar be sought out? This is an issue which has come up many times for me over the years. When I am confronted by a “southpaw” (as I unabashedly and affectionately refer to left-handed folk) who wishes to play guitar, wondering what to do regarding the instrument’s orientation, there is no pat answer: I find I have to take a holistic view of the player.
On one hand (so to speak), simple logic would dictate for the prospective left-handed player a left-handed instrument: strings reversed in the saddle, fretted with the right hand. This places the low strings of the instrument nearer the thumb of the fretting hand, mirroring the standard orientation used by *northpaws*. Add to the equation (on the other — um — hand) major retrofits for standard guitars, or premium prices for factory-southpaw models.
Let’s examine this. Just how left-handed are you? I have seen, on several occasions, first-time players who write left-handed but would naturally hold a guitar right-handed, because it “feels better” that way. Others are decidedly left-handed, but relatively ambidextrous as well, and report no particular affinity for one position over the other. Still other guitar players, hard-core southpaw fledglings that they are, simply must reverse their strings to operate at all.
I even know one southpaw jazz guitarist who played 25 years or more right-handed, then decided to switch, reteaching his hands everything! Now he’s a switch-hitter. Carries two guitars to the gig! He finds he plays rhythm better left-handed, but plays lead better right-handed! Ever try this?!! Paul’s a trip!
Then there’s:
The Theory of Lateral Manual Orientation as Applied to Guitar Playing
Follow closely here:
* Left-brain (analytical, rational) controls the right hand
* Right-brain (emotional, creative) controls the left hand
* Fretting-hand controls harmonic structure (reason)
* Strumming-hand controls articulation (emotion).
Ergo, a person playing in a left-handed manner (left-hand strumming/right-hand fretting) is more psycho-physiologically attuned to the instrument than a right-hander! In the case of the southpaw, the rational left side of the brain is controlling the rational right fretting hand, and the emotional right side of the brain is controlling the emotional left strumming hand. Northpaw orientation is then actually a reversal of the preferred connections. I thus propose that southpaws playing left-handedly intrinsically have — yes — * the upper hand *! … [Any psychologists out there want a piece of this pie?]
In any event, most people who *can* be right-handed are soon-enough oriented as children to be so. Only hard-core southpaws (or those sufficiently to the left in the ambi-spectrum to render ineffective society’s pressure for them to < learn to be> northpaws) utimately find a way to embrace their unique quality: to actually _want_ to drive in England!
So, *feel* where you are in the laterality spectrum. When you first pick up a guitar, even not knowing how to play, does it in one orientation or the other? Try right-handed for awhile, then switch. Bear in mind that you can only get the feel of the body of the guitar this way! To judge the string orientation, you would need to get on a southpaw guitar. Anyway, which feels better to you? Noone can tell you these things. You must tune into your own natural orientation, then choose.
“Can you play a standard guitar left-handed, without reversing the strings?”
Yes, and many great southpaw players have done just that. However, there are advantages to having the low strings near the thumb and the high strings under the fingers of the fretting hand (muting techniques, chord flow and melodic flexibility, and a host of other equally obscure issues), which is why the northpaw orientation is such as it is in the first place. My opinion is that it is preferable to maintain the relative orientation of the strings to the hand, so if you play left-handedly, you should get the guitar retro-fitted for southpaw operation. Otherwise, you just trade one set of problems (involving merely money) for another (involving a complex and unintuitive approach to learning the guitar).
If you choose to go left-handed, then bear in mind these things;
1) All the guitars you buy will need to be custom lefties, or a standard guitar made southpaw. The latter involves at the least cutting a new nut, and adjusting, possibly even replacing, the bridge. The bridge saddle must be properly adjusted to fine tune the intonation of the instrument. If out of adjustment, the guitar will play out of tune. On classic guitars it is generally fairly easy to do a southpaw retrofit, as the bridge saddle is basically perpendicular to the strings.
Most electrics and acoustic instruments, on the other hand (couldn’t resist doing that again), require a slight angle of the saddle to the strings (this is due to the much wider range of string diameters which steel-strings have in comparison to nylon-strings, and the consistant gradation of these diameters from low to high across the bridge saddle). Then there is also the issue of acoustic guitars often being braced to accomodate the difference in tension between the heavy low strings and the lighter high strings.
The adjustable bridges found on most electrics can *sometimes* allow for the necessary adjustments. Retrofitting an acoustic guitar for southpaw use can be expensive, as generally the entire bridge assembly must be replaced to accomodate adjustment. And for various reasons this is not always easily done (ever try to replace a bridge on an Ovation?); and
2) Most of the graphic learning materials, such as scale and chord charts, which you encounter will have to be mentally reversed before they’re of use to you.
My advice? OK, here goes:
* If you write, bat, dial, wipe and caress with your left hand, give it up…you’re a hardcore southpaw, and you’re going to be tweaking bridges for a long time to come. Find a good guitar tech and make them your dear friend. Revel in your relative rarity! Let your Freak Flag fly!
* If you *can* play right-handed, your guitar life will be considerably simpler. It thus becomes an issue of trading-off aspects of your natural southpaw advantage by virtue of the Theory of Lateral Manual Orientation as Applied to Guitar Playing (see above) in exchange for easy access to guitars.
* And if you’re a beginning guitarist from among the northpaw masses who wishes to test my Theory (see above, again) by learning to play as do the lucky southpaws, by all means try it! Just don’t send me the bill.
As in most things in life, find your balance.
‘Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hands:
He could not make Antonio Stadivari’s violins without Antonio.
– George Eliot
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Copyright 1996 Jeff Foster. All Rights Reserved.