Left handed 12 year old wants to learn guitar

[garybaldy]

I have a 'troubled' nephew who is new to music and has a small keyboard. He is thinking about playing guitar (not necessarily jazz). I pulled out some of my stuff for him today - Les Paul and tube amp, flat top acoustic. I've offered to give him some lessons. He is left handed (I am right handed) and I don't know whether he should have a left handed guitar. My brother is left handed but has been playing guitar right handed since he started in the 60s. What do you folks think is best for a beginner? Thanks.

[SOLR]

I have a 'troubled' nephew who is new to music and has a small keyboard. He is thinking about playing guitar (not necessarily jazz). I pulled out some of my stuff for him today - Les Paul and tube amp, flat top acoustic. I've offered to give him some lessons. He is left handed (I am right handed) and I don't know whether he should have a left handed guitar. My brother is left handed but has been playing guitar right handed since he started in the 60s. What do you folks think is best for a beginner? Thanks.

My brother is also a lefty but he learned on a right hand guitar...Left handed guitars seem more prevalent these days though. What do horn players do or pianists ? and then there's Hendrix.....
Not much help I guess....

sorry

S

[Jimmy blue note]

It's always hard to begin, whether you're left handed or right. At the first, it will be difficult to master chord shapes, but you learn. At the first, it will be difficult to control the strum and playing individual strings with the right hand, but you learn. Right or left handed. It's hard for us all.

Playing "right handed" or "normal" gives you an automatic membership to the entire resource of written material for guitar, and it gives you a visual direct relationship with any teacher you work with. I have taught for decades working with students individually and in class situations, and it's WAY harder to learn new material when a student is constantly making the process an exercise in translation too. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I am saying it may be more work in the initial phases but the payback is more than worth it.
Fast forward to years down the line. Maybe you get good, or good enough to learn the virtues of a finer instrument. How stacked is the market when you want to upgrade to a better guitar? What are your chances of finding that used [name your guitar deal you just saw on reverb] guitar in LEFT HANDED?

You might be asking "Does it make me (him) a weaker player once the fundamentals are assimilated?" Do left handed instruments make a left handed player a better guitarist by (leveling the playing field) using reversed strings?
I played with a guitar player for years, he was technically beyond anything I could ever hope to achieve. It was years before I even knew he was left handed, when I saw him writing. His name was Mick Goodrick and he told me playing a right handed guitar gave him fretting dexterity and strength and coordination that he turned into his greatest strength. His dexterity of left hand articulation was uncanny. He learned that playing and mastering any art is taking what you're given and turning what you have into your strengths.That's what mastery is.

Years ago I was in Matty Uminov's Greenwich Village shop and someone asked what he had for left handed guitars. He curtly said "Nothing." Asked why not, he said "Did you ever see a left handed piano? Do you type with a left handed keyboard?"

Just something to think about.


Hey here's an idea: drop an open tuned guitar in his lap and give him a slide, the way the old blues players did. Maybe he'll begin making amazing music before he even realizes it's hard ...or "backwards"

[Litterick]

I am left-handed, but I have always played right-handed, because I can. Some lefties cannot play right-handed. It is impossible to explain to a rightie what being a leftie is like, but some actions feel disconnected; attempting them does not work. Others can be done with effort. Still others can be done naturally. Your nephew will discover, very quickly, what he can do, once he tries a right-handed guitar.

[emanresu]

Should check if there is a difference of some kind with pianists considering L vs. R-handedness. I have heard "Did you ever see a left handed piano?" but without any such follow-up argument.

Btw, there's a degree of how much one side dominates. Can't bring up just one person as an example.
I do kinda like the idea that in jazz, the dominant hand maybe should do the harder thing - zillion shapes and whatnot.

[bluenote61]

I'm a strong left handed guy. But I grew up in the sixties where right handed was "normal" and left handed was "unnatural", like a gen-defect.
So I am writing with my right hand and playing guitar right-handed. Everything else I do with my left hand (I get crazy with right handed scissors!).
My handwriting is quite unreadable, same way is my playing when funky rhythms are asked to do with the right hand.
It took years for me to get a consistent right hand for rhythm guitar. But I'm not afraid on complex chord shapes with my left hand.
In my youth, no left handed guitars were available where I grew up. I don't know what would have been if so.

Let your nephew decide what he wants to do. But I'm afraid that he will take the guitar in the right hand because everyone does so.
Best would be to give him the chance to choose, to let him try a right handed string guitar and one strung up for lefties (most of us have more than one guitar available ).

FWIW, in school I made sometimes jokes with my ability to write easily mirror inverted sentences with my left hand. This only as a hint how the brain works for lefties trained to do right handed.

[cmajor9]

I’m ambidextrous, and do most things like a left-handed person, but its always made more sense to play guitar right-handed. Your left hand is doing the more detailed work. Of course its also less limiting as far as your choice of guitars.

[emanresu]

Oh. When I’m playing straightforward medium-tempo swing, I use much less nuanced dynamics and timbre.
But with classical, it feels more like brain surgery—requiring precision with my right hand. I could never trust my left hand to handle the job.

[Cunamara]

There are well known guitarists and bassists who are left-handed and playing a right handed instrument: Duane Allman, Phil Lesh, etc., just to name two. I've never seen a left-handed violin, viola, cello, upright bass, piano, organ, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, flute... you get the idea. I think guitars and bass guitars are the most readily available left handed instruments. Mainly I think this reflects most of the world just overlooking the needs of left-handed people (I am right-handed), but also the adaptability of people to make use of the tools they have.

[Dennis D]

If everyone, whether righty or lefty, starts out guitar playing with one hand already dominant, which they do, and everyone by definition has to coordinate dexterity between the two hands, then what difference would it make, early on, if your left or right hand is the one you have to get up to speed ?

And then given the industry / instrument standard right hand design, and the cost and availability of left handed instruments, it seems to be a no-brainer decision.

But of course MHO.

[djg]

Years ago I was in Matty Uminov's Greenwich Village shop and someone asked what he had for left handed guitars. He curtly said "Nothing." Asked why not, he said "Did you ever see a left handed piano? Do you type with a left handed keyboard?"

Just something to think about.

i thought about it. it's nonsense. with the piano both hands share the same kind of activity. independence is an issue. with guitar the issue is coordination. both hands have very different tasks. if everyone played like stanley jordan, umanov would have had a point. there is no need for a lefty guitar if there is no picking hand.

a better question would have been why there are so few left-handed violins. the answer there has probably to do with the rigidness of classical education and the logistics of orchestras. i'd guess it is harder to seat the strings if one is bowing the other way.

[bluenote61]

a better question would have been why there are so few left-handed violins. the answer there has probably to do with the rigidness of classical education and the logistics of orchestras. i'd guess it is harder to seat the strings if one is bowing the other way.

Makes sense.

[djg]

Makes sense.

confirmed here. quite interesting.

[Tal_175]

Fun fact, Rafael Nadal is actually right handed. His uncle taught him to play with his left hand because he believed that would give him an advantage.

[Ukena]

FWIW, french horns are only available left-handed. Every horn player plays the notes with the fingers on the left hand (of course, the embouchure is much more important than the valves).

I don't know how you'd tackle the question of which does harder work on a guitar: the picking hand or the fretting hand. Each takes hours and hours of practice to become proficient, let alone expert.

Neither fretting nor picking (any style) come naturally.

[Fusionshred]

For those who ask if there’s a left-handed piano, listen to Ringo Starr explain how playing a right-handed drum kit as a lefty is what gave him his unique sound.

I am a lefty and I always thought that it made more sense to play righty. The fretting hand should be the dominant hand since chord formation and single note runs require maximum dexterity.

Early on when I asked my teacher about it, he said “turn the guitar around. How does it feel?” It felt awkward.

[Peter C]

"Your fretting hand is what you know; your picking hand is who you are". YMMV

If you can tap out an even paradiddle without having to consciously train and compensate for the weaker hand, more power to you. I for one am completely "lopsided" and can't imagine (as a righty) my left hand being the driving force for dynamics (etc etc).

Maybe give the beginner an open-tuned guitar and get them to follow a simple kick-snare drum pattern alternating between the two hands and see how they get on.

Edit: also check out how firmly or naturally he/she grips a (light) pick while strumming.

[garybaldy]

Thanks to everyone for info and advice.
Owing to the fact that almost all instruments are not specifically handed and that most left handed people seem to use so called right handed instruments I am interested to know how left handed beginners feel a left handed instrument is the way to go. (some may not even know that a left hand guitar is available).
Ofcourse there are those that play a right handed guitar upside down with right hand stringing!!

[RJVB]

a better question would have been why there are so few left-handed violins. the answer there has probably to do with the rigidness of classical education and the logistics of orchestras. i'd guess it is harder to seat the strings if one is bowing the other way.

More the prevalent view on left-handedness I fear. Remember the latin word for "left": sinistra...
Left-handed violinists can be seated in an orchestra (for cello players it would be more difficult but I suppose). I'm afraid they'd still have had a hard time getting hired because it looks bad.

If handedness really had no importance in keyboard playing I think there would be known examples of early keyboard instruments that put the melody in the left hand (and not just in iconographic resources - not that I'm aware of any there). Remember that the hand playing the melody most of the time has 2 roles on those instruments: hitting the right keys at the right time and tone production. The latter is an easily underestimated role but keyboard and to some extent guitar make it clear why the right hand requires the more intricate neuromuscular control of the two.
There's also an argument I've seen floating around that it is controlled by the left hemisphere which also houses Broca's Area. An argument that doesn't seem entirely far-fetched (but that may have been debunked in the literature).

[pamosmusic]

You’d have to get a lefty violin custom made too. Much taller order than finding a lefty guitar, which is most beginner models with a $100 up charge or something.

I was in string techniques (strings for non-string playing music ed majors) with one of the other guitarists who was a lefty and played lefty. The teacher kept dinging his left hand technique until he complained and was like “dude I can’t put my fingers the way you’re saying because my nails are in the way” and the teacher was like “well yes but we spoke about finger placement and nail maintenance in the first week so that’s your responsibility.

And it took us ten minutes to get the teacher to understand that some left handed guitarists actually play left handed instruments and that he couldn’t trim his nails etc etc. It was very funny. It just did not compute.

So anyway … I think to be a lefty violinist you’d either need to switch late or be willing to shell out a grand for a custom fingerboard and bridge right out of the gate.

[RJVB]

And it took us ten minutes to get the teacher to understand that some left handed guitarists actually play left handed instruments and that he couldn’t trim his nails etc etc. It was very funny. It just did not compute.

Something doesn't compute indeed. A left-handed guitarist playing with nails on his left/picking hand should be as handicapped to trim his nails as a right-handed one playing "normally". Idem for the other hand, of course.

So anyway … I think to be a lefty violinist you’d either need to switch late or be willing to shell out a grand for a custom fingerboard and bridge right out of the gate.

Hmmm, I have a recollection of another kid at my music school who played a lefty violin, and that was before the influx of cheap Chinese instruments.

And yes, bridge and fingerboard are mirrored, but worse than that the bass bar would have to be moved to the other side. Maybe Jimmy BN will chime in, but that sounds like something you don't want to do (even if the top is actually carved symmetrically which I don't know if it is).

Switching late? Can you imagine the effort and discipline that would take? That's something you only do when you can no longer play like you used to do (like Reinhardt Goebel).

[sgosnell]

Speaking of violins, Joe Holley, who played with Bob Wills for years, was left-handed, and played a standard violin in standard stringing and tuning, but left-handed. And he could play. I've often fantasized about playing a left-handed guitar, thinking it should be easier when I'm right-handed, but I've never had enough incentive to find a lefty guitar. They aren't common. I would encourage any left-handed beginner to at least try playing right-handed, because almost everything is easier. Easier to find a guitar and a teacher, absolutely.

[rpjazzguitar]

I recall from somewhere that there are degrees of lefthandedness. Might matter but I don’t know where to go with that.

I am a right hander who plays guitar right handed. Since I find the right hand to be more difficult than the left, I’m glad I have my dominant hand doing the picking.

Just an observation. I have no recommendation.

[mr. beaumont]

I taught beginners for years, and some lefties could definitely play right handed while others felt much more comfortable left handed.

I think there's a lot at play here, and I definitely believe in "degrees of left-handedness," or rather maybe more like degrees of being more ambidextrous. I also think that if you are a lefty and already know about left handed guitars it affects the way you view the instrument.

[marcwhy]

Another Lefty here who plays right handed!

I vote for having the kid play right handed, too, and thanks for helping him with the gear and lessons (and love, obviously)!