Left-Handed Guitar

Post Reply New Topic

As a left-handed person, the orientation of left-handed guitar always felt more natural to me, and I like the uniqueness of playing lefty, so I learned lefty.

Are there any other left-handed guitarists here?

← I play violin left-handedly -- bowing with my left and fretting with my right -- only because I am missing the middle finger of my left hand. Otherwise, I am right-handed.

I'm a righty, but my favourite musician is a leftie and he sometimes mentions it in his songs. It's interesting watching lefties and righties on stage together as they can't jump around like all righties or all lefties. I think this is probably why Tim holds his guitar almost vertical on stage.

I know a lefty guitarist and it's a pleasure to perform with him because we can share a mic without crashing our guitar necks into each other, as long as I'm on the left and he's on the right. I was never into jumping around so I wouldn't know about that. The stages I've performed on have usually been too small for it anyway.

Interesting. Can you play normal violins or do your strings need to be in reversed order?



That's cool.

You can make it work if you put the lefty on stage right so there's no clashing of headstocks, but yeah, having a lefty frontman with a righty playing next to him on the right would be awkward

Silly question from a non-guitarist whom often mixes up stuff when it comes to left and right but -

What's the left-handed way of holding a guitar? Left on the bottom and right at the top / neck? Or is it the other way around?

Right-handed (they strum with their right hand and fret with their left)



Left-handed (they strum with their left hand and fret with their right) but the guitar is upside down, so strings are in a different order, some people change the order of strings.



Bob Geldoff ^ plays right-handed guitars left-handed, but doesn't change the strings.

Last edited by Recidivist on 07 Apr 2023, 6:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

See this is why I was backward on the bass ^ .
No wonder it didn't work.

I thought you got it working?

Barely, but a little. I should try again now that I have more time on my hands.

^ Do it, IMO Bass is easier to learn than guitar (but a bit harder on the fingertips), lots of YT videos out there.

The amps and stuff wouldn't always be available but can I do without or would guitar be easier (even acoustic to start?)

It depends on you, I find Bass easier to learn. Most people learn on an acoustic guitar first. Playing an electric bass without an amp is possible. You can connect the guitar to your mac or phone with the right equipment.

The left-handed violin I have is a mirror-image of a right-handed violin.

I just asked my daughter who is lefty and she said she plays right.
She's kind of ambidextrous though.
She also knits right-handed.
She said it was just easier to follow regular (right-handed) instructions.

Thanks, Recidivist.

I recently attended an event where the game Guitar Hero was set up. Since I had never played before, I figured I would give it a go.

Without thinking about it, I put my left hand where you would strum on a regular guitar and my right hand to fret / where the buttons were on the fake guitar.

I didn't clock why the buttons on screen didn't match up to the order of buttons on the guitar at first. Figured it was to give the game more difficulty. Then I realised that I was meant to be holding it the other way around. Whoops. The game became a lot easier after that of course.

Chances are there was probably an option to change that in the settings, but I didn't look since I wasn't staying long.

I'm left-handed - I write with my left. Figured what I'd done was probably the left-handed way of doing things, but I wasn't completely sure.