GUITAR LESSONS - NJ and NY
Airmont, Allendale, Fair Lawn,
Franklin Lakes, Glen Rock,
Hawthorne, HoHoKus, Hillburn, Mahwah,
Midland Park, Montebello, Montvale,
New Milford, Oakland, Oradell,
Paramus, Park Ridge, Ramsey,
Ridgewood, River Edge, Saddle River, Suffern,
Tallman, Upper Saddle River,
Waldwick, Washington Township, Westwood,
Woodcliff Lake or Wyckoff
BEGINNER • INTERMEDIATE
ADVANCED • AUDITION PREPARATION
SHOULD LEFTIES PLAY LEFTY?
If you are left-handed, you are among,
at best, 7.5% of the civilized world's population.
Quite the minority!
You have probably been learning
to do things the opposite or
backwards from the way everyone else does them.
There are web sites and organized groups
dedicated to you, rare, people and
some of them have catalogs and stores
of 'left-handed' merchandise to sell.
So, you're a lefty and you want to play guitar.
Do you get a lefty guitar or do you learn righty?
Most lefties think they should learn lefty,
play lefty and have a lefty guitar.
And if anyone has suggested you learn righty,
you have probably thought of their advice
as discriminatory and
intended to handicap you.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
In the decades I have taught,
I have only taught one left-handed student
who I allowed to play lefty
while we worked together --
and that was because
he had been playing for several year
s and was unwilling to switch.
In retrospect,
I should have insisted he do so.
It is my practice now.
All the rest of my left-handed students,
including ones who began with other instructors,
have played righty,
and played exceptionally well.
Think about it:
If your naturally stronger, dominant
and more dexterous hand is your left hand,
and the righty manner of playing
is with the left hand on the fingerboard,
do you really want to put your clumsy right hand
on the fingerboard and
only pick, with your very precise and agile left hand?
Anyone analyzing this impartially,
has to say NO!
The real question is why don't righties play lefty?
There is an adjustment that
righty-playing lefties have to make:
It is the mental adjustment from
reversing everything you were taught
how to do by a righty.
It's much easier said than done ....
but it is worth the adjustment.
You can master the confusion
in about 2 weeks, if you apply yoursel
f to playing righty and
do not waver or intermittently
revert to lefty technique.
After this sincere urging,
if you still insist on learning and playing lefty,
please take note:
you cannot restring a righty guitar
and play it lefty!
There are lefty guitars for a reason.
That reason is that the construction
of a guitar, whether acoustic or electric,
is predicated on the degree of tension
on each string, the layout of the tuners,
the necessary height and possibly
the angle of the bridge and/or
bridge nut and more factors.
The interior bracing of a righty acoustic guitar
may not support the tension
if it is restrung lefty.
Realize the difference in the
pounds of tension on the two E strings
of an acoustic guitar.
The bass E string is loose an thick.
The high E string is thin and
very tightly strung to get it to pitch.
A well made guitar is braced
to compensate for those disparities.
So, my best advice for your success
as a lefty guitarist is to discipline yourself
to learn and play righty.
[This is a digression, but let me add here,
that you CANNOT string steel strings
on a nylon string guitar nor nylon strings
on a steel string guitar.
The former will destroy the guitar --
the previous owner of one of my
nylon string guitars ripped the bridge off
by trying to make it a steel string.
The latter will be too slack to play
and will only buzz.]
Email Me if you'd like to submit
a Question of the Week or
suggest an additional segment topic.
If I use one you submit,
I'll send you an official
Guitar Technique Tutor Podcast pick.
Tell a guitarist friend who might also have questions.
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© 2012 D A Arlaus, all rights reserved
Sunday, January 1, 2012