Left handed, but playing right handed

[BRUCEMATTHEWS]

I am left handed, and have been playing right handed since I was 14 (now 60). I have, and continue to have trouble with strumming and picking because my right hand just doesn't cooperate. Do you have any advice to improve when the right hand can't seem to figure it out? I am way behind my peers, am in a band, and just can't seem to play a lot things I need to.

 

[CaptOblivious]

I am the opposite, childhood injury to my left hand made me change sides. Have you tried playing lefty? At 60 still plenty of time to master it on your natural side! I will say if you do switch be prepared for lack of instrument choices!

 

[Silicon Valley Tom]

A friend of mine is left-handed and plays right-handed. As suggested, try playing lefty!

Back in 1962 I met a young lady at a guitar store in San Francisco who was left-handed and played classical guitar, Her teacher made her play left-handed but simply took a standard guitar made for right-handed players and turned it 180 degrees. The student had been learning guitar with the strings in reversed order in relation to the hand. This limited her ability to play and I pointed it out to her, Some teachers are not competent and do not care!

So try lefty (normal for a left-handed player) and let us know how it goes! Do you have a left-handed guitar?

Tom

 

[Elwood]

. Do you have any advice to improve when the right hand can't seem to figure it out?

When you think about it the guitar is pretty ambidextrous. with right hand playing your left has to chord or find notes while your right goes to work sounding them out, whether with a pick or fingers. Many times (for me) it is more challenging to get the right hand to behave like I want when fingerpicking, the left has to go do what it knows how to until I get both working together (as well as I can).
I think I would spend a little time keyboarding, whether typing from a qwerty normal hand position -or- playing what you can on a keyboard...and working it. Just playing simple chords and melodies will usually fall to the right hand. If you can do that, even a little, if you try to just hit root note bass parts it will force you to "ignore" your right while your left goes out foraging for notes.
Those pentatonic patterns are great for picking exercise. You can teach your left pretty quickly and then put it on auto and work your right. One caveat, I have to kinda ignore my hand to execute smoothly. If my mind wanders to analyzing what I'm trying to do with my right I often crash, where when I am just hearing the notes go by things go pretty good.
Changing hands at this point in your playing life will either be the best thing you have done or it will be a confusing experience at the muscle memory level.
Just some crazy musings from the peanut gallery.
All the best!

 

[PapaRaptor]

I have wondered the same thing.

I'm left handed, but play right handed. When I first picked up a guitar, I didn't even know there was such a critter as a left-handed guitar. To be fully up front, I'm not sure how left-handed I am. I write left-handed, eat left-handed and play pool left-handed. I can (or have learned) to use hand tools both ways, but if I pick up a screwdriver, it's with my left hand. I throw a ball right-handed and I kick right-footed. When I played baseball as a kid, I batted right-handed.
Before I retired, my business partner was also a lefty. He wanted to learn guitar, so I loaned him one of my guitars. He made no progress on it for several months. One day he decided to go to a local music store and pulled a left handed Strat off the wall. He was immediately more comfortable with it and ended up buying one. He never really followed it up and the Strat is more of an art piece in his house now.
When I did the setup on his lefty Strat, it seemed entirely foreign to me. Just tuning it was extremely awkward for me and getting my brain around the entire setup process took me at least twice as long as if I was working on a righty instrument.

Steve Morse, who won the Guitar Player Magazine guitarist of the year reader's poll for five consecutive years is left-handed, but plays right. On the other hand (yes, I said it), Eric Gales is right-handed but plays guitar left-handed. He adds a bit extra in the fact that with the left hand orientation (pick left, fret right), the guitar is still strung as if it was played right handed.

Probably doesn't help you much, but I'm convinced there are degrees of left-handed-ness.