Left-handed Guitars - A Solution in Search of a Problem

• by Ken Hiebert

Ah, the age-old question:

If you’re left-handed, is it better to learn on a left-handed guitar?

I’d like to posit this question in a slightly different way:

Why on earth would you want to?

Being left-handed myself, and someone who plays guitar “right-handed”, as well as being a guitar instructor for the last dozen years or more, I have developed some fairly strong opinions on this.  If you happen to be a left-hander who plays a left-handed guitar, please don’t take offense at this because it really only applies to those who are just beginning their journey.  If you already know how to play then please keep on rockin’!

For everyone else, let me first attempt to answer the second question. If you are left handed (like me), you’ve probably noticed that pretty much everything in the world is against you because it’s been designed with the right-handed person in mind. Whether it’s using an old-school can opener or those little school desks with the left side wide open, or even trying to write with a pen and smearing ink all across the page, it’s pretty obvious that the world has it in for lefties - and don’t even get me started about writing in a three ring binder. Oh yeah, and right-handed scissors. Whoa. Well, thankfully someone did come up with a left-handed version of those that works, but with most of these other things, we’re basically screwed. It’s sink or swim, buddy. Get with the program or get out and walk.

It’s pretty severe and the struggle is real, but if there was something a left-hander could just do naturally and not worry about having to adjust his or her whole life to do it, wouldn’t that be preferable?

I remember my Mom telling me about my aunt (who’s a lefty) when she was in school. The teacher had been trying to force her to write with her right hand (there it is again - wRITE with the right hand, the proper hand). Anyway, she was having a tough time until my Grandpa went down there and tore a strip off that teacher and told her she better let his damn kid write with whichever hand she damn well wants (or something like that). So, it fixed the problem, but not without a lot of pain and a huge amount of expended energy.

Now, back to the answer to the second question which I’ll repeat because by now you’ve likely forgotten what it was:

“Why on earth would anyone want to play a left-handed guitar?”

So, you’re a lefty who really wants to play guitar and you just came home with your first left-handed guitar.  You’ve taken lessons for a month or so and you’ve just spent the whole weekend working on the coolest riff you’ve ever heard.   Let’s say it was the riff from “Smoke on the Water”, because if you’ve just started learning guitar, then that probably *is* the coolest riff you’ve ever heard. Now, say you’re at your friend’s place and he’s also learning how to play guitar and you’re really pumped to show him this awesome riff.  Then you realize that you don’t know how to play *his* guitar.  You only know how to play *your* guitar.  Then repeat that scenario for every one of your other friends as well.

Now fast forward about a year and you’re in a small music store, and there’s this dude playing a really nasty version of “Stairway to Heaven” and you know you can play it WAY better than him. You look around on the rack for a lefty guitar but sadly, they don’t have any in stock.  Foiled again!

Now, I totally skipped over the part where you went to your local, small-town music store and played a dozen different guitars because you wanted to find the perfect one to make all your dreams come true - one you could buy with the money you saved pumping gas all summer.  The reason I skipped that part is because it likely never happened.  You’d be lucky to find even one guitar you could play at most small music stores and guaranteed, it’s going to be more money than its right-handed equivalent.

Ok, so after all of that, I still don’t know why anyone would ever really *want* to play a left handed guitar, unless someone simply convinces you that you should.

My first band consisted of myself on guitar, my friend Ian on bass guitar, and my other friend James on drums.  James also played guitar and Ian played everything, but the one thing we had in common is that we were all left-handed. What are the chances!?

*Interesting side note:

Like most lefties, we enjoyed talking about how the entire world is against us, and when another friend noticed this, he remarked that we “sounded like a bunch of bitter southpaws.” Our band name was born!

Now, the interesting thing about these three Bitter Southpaws is that we all played guitar right-handed.  Another interesting tidbit is that in the arts, the incidence of left-handedness seems to be relatively high, and among left-handed guitarists, the majority of them don’t play a left-handed guitar.

Here’s another question that you probably have never asked:

“Why does everyone in North America operate a standard transmission with their right hand, while in the UK they use the left hand?”  

Here’s a hint - it’s not because everyone in North America is right handed or that everyone is left handed in the UK. It’s because that’s the way they are built.  To build them the other way around would be ridiculous and would cause more problems than the imaginary one it would solve.  Just because you are offered a choice doesn’t mean that it’s legitimate or beneficial.  As a left-hander myself who plays “right” I’m convinced that the opportunity someone saw for a niche market in left handed guitars was a solution in search of a problem.  Could you learn to play a left handed guitar?  Of course, but why would you want to unless some salesperson convinced you that you should?  

I’m also convinced that left-handed guitars have caused more problems than they’ve solved.  Learning a musical instrument is challenging enough as it is, so why in the world would anyone want to make it more complicated than it needs to be?  

There have also been some great players of upside-down guitars (Jimi Hendrix, Alber King, Elizabeth Cotton), as well as great guitarists who played with the guitar laying flat on their laps (Jeff Healey comes to mind.)   Could you do that? Probably.  That doesn’t mean that it’s the easy way or the best way to do it, it just means that humans are capable of almost anything they put their minds to.  I’ve even seen someone play guitar with his feet.  You gotta do what you gotta do, I guess.

So, to answer the first question:

Should a lefty start learning on a left-handed guitar?

If you’ve never played a guitar before, then I would say a resounding NO!  I don’t think personal preference has anything to do with it.  In order to play guitar well, both hands need to function well above what would be considered “normal function” for non-musicians and if you’re starting from zero anyway, you might as well just do it the normal way.  Learn to play the instrument the way it was designed.  It will make your life easier.  There’s a reason you don’t see right-handed pianos, or right-handed saxophones.  Now, I’ve taught a few lefties in my day, but they had already been playing that way for over a year before they came to me, so changing it up at that point would not only have been insensitive, it would’ve been completely ridiculous.

When I walked into my first guitar lesson over 35 years ago and picked up my first guitar in a left handed fashion, Chet Breau (son of the late, great Lenny Breau) told me something like, “Kid, if you don’t already know how to play that thing, I’m gonna teach you the RIGHT way!”  I’m so glad he did, and this is exactly how I approach the subject with my own students today.