Comment by kazinator
7 months ago
Why is it that right-handed people play stringed instruments such that the strings are actuated with the right hand (finger picking, flatpicking, strumming, bowing), and fingered with the left? Many left handed players reverse the arrangement.
On the other hand (pun inteneded) left-handed pianos are almost unheard of.
To dispel some apparent ignorance, both left and right hand dexterity is important for playing fretted string instruments, such as the guitar.
On the guitar, the left hand is doing a lot more than just pressing on strings: chords, slides, bends, tapping as in hammer-ons/pull-offs, natural harmonics, even muting strings in some techniques (see Stevie Ray Vaughan’s style).
The right hand is also doing more than just strumming or picking: two-handed tapping, artificial harmonics, palm muting, using the whammy bar to produce vibrato or whole-chord bends.
There are also techniques like sweep picking which require very precise coordination between both hands.
Same goes for fretless string instruments: playing long notes by drawing the bow over the strings (legato) is the bread and butter of bowed instruments like the violin and the cello, but they can also be played with short stabs of the bow (staccato) or by picking the strings with the fingers of the right hand (pizzicato), among others. Vibrato and slides are played using the left hand, simply by moving the finger up and down the string.
Exactly; both hands have a complex job to do requiring dexterity and timing. Hence the question.
String actuation requires much finer and varied motor skills than simply pressing down on the string. There's many strengths and directions in how a string can be plucked or bowed or strummed and it changes how it sounds, but pressing down on the string is pretty on/off binary.
yeah i am left handed but learned to play a right handed guitar and I have often wished i had done it differently - maybe one of these days i'll pick up a lefty guitar and learn all over again
same, I actually switched hands for a bit out of curiousity but didn't restring. mainly used to buy used guitars, pawn shop specials so finding a specifically right hand guitar would probably be more difficult, plus I liked the idea of being able to play a guitar that wasn't mine. I didn't do too much tho, as I'm not that good a right handed player either hehe
> Many left handed players reverse the arrangement.
This is untrue and actually uncommon. Not every instrument is a guitar. Left handed cello players don't string their instrument upside-down. They play it right handed.
According to the internet several left-handed guitar players play normal (right-handed) guitars normal way. For the "why", I don't think there is anything particularly interesting here; several left-handed people tend to use asymmetric items that are made for right-handed people.
Did you perhaps want a word other than "several"?
Several is commonly understood to be a single digit figure, above 1, but well below 9.
The habits or preferences of "several" people in the entire world don't mean anything.
("Several percent", and you've got something).
Yes, I was unaware of that. Thank you for pointing it out
Clearly it's to stop right-handed players from 'cheating' their way through Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.