jezzaboy Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 [quote name='stingrayPete1977' post='1306032' date='Jul 16 2011, 05:40 PM']It has happened then I thought it must of! Just to be sure then he plays a left handed bass that could be given to a regular left hooker strung as normal but plays it as I would as a right hooker but the strings then become upside down? I bet he started on something symetrical like a kay SG or similar.[/quote] Nah. He plays a right handed Jazz as a normal right handed person would, but the bass is strung G D A E instead of E A D G. I seem to remember him saying that he was so used to playing the left hander upside down , that he couldn`t get used to playing a right hander the conventional way so just plays keeps it strung the same way. I`m away for a lie down. Jez Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stingrayPete1977 Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 [quote name='jezzaboy' post='1306506' date='Jul 17 2011, 11:16 AM']Nah. He plays a right handed Jazz as a normal right handed person would, but the bass is strung G D A E instead of E A D G. I seem to remember him saying that he was so used to playing the left hander upside down , that he couldn`t get used to playing a right hander the conventional way so just plays keeps it strung the same way. I`m away for a lie down. Jez[/quote] He could be the only person in the world that has it that way! does he know that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danimal Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 I'm another left-hander with the decency to learn my instrument the right way round. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whynot Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 [quote name='Danimal' post='1306617' date='Jul 17 2011, 01:05 PM']I'm another left-hander with the decency to learn my instrument the right way round.[/quote] Would like to think that was said in humour rather than knocking some of us without your ability. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardHimself Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 [quote name='Crimson Guitars' post='1306486' date='Jul 17 2011, 11:00 AM']I know he's a guitarist but we build Robert Fripps guitars (some of them) and he's a lefty playing righty and he's one of the all time greats! Some of the best ever players I've met have been leftys on 'the wrong' instrument.. it's the people who can swap around that blow me away.. at Crimson Guitars we don't charge any extra for left-handers.. maybe we should offer a discount!? [/quote] It doesn't cost any more to produce a custom made left hand instrument does it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Rich Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 (edited) [quote name='EdwardHimself' post='1306780' date='Jul 17 2011, 04:16 PM']It doesn't cost any more to produce a custom made left hand instrument does it?[/quote] If everything is chopped out by computer controlled machines then probably not, if the shapes are cut and routed by hand I guess a left handed template has to be made. Or a left handed mould if you're using carbon fibre. Plus you need lots of mirrors in the factory to check whether it looks right Daft question perhaps but do the knobs work the opposite way round on a left handed bass? Or is that as daft as expecting the pedals to be the other way round on a LHD car? Edited July 17, 2011 by Fat Rich Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBass Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 They seem to charge more for lefty Basses, but they ain't as common as the right handers... hence the sales. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EdwardHimself Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 [quote name='Fat Rich' post='1306785' date='Jul 17 2011, 04:24 PM']Daft question perhaps but do the knobs work the opposite way round on a left handed bass? Or is that as daft as expecting the pedals to be the other way round on a LHD car? [/quote] I don't think they are; because of the way knobs are numbered it means that they go clockwise to go on and anticlockwise for off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jezzaboy Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 [quote name='stingrayPete1977' post='1306598' date='Jul 17 2011, 12:52 PM']He could be the only person in the world that has it that way! does he know that?[/quote] I also seem to remember Andy saying that it improved upper fret access on the E string. Am I the only person who read this interview? Did I dream it all up Jez Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jezzaboy Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Ah ha!!! I have found proof of this upside down melarkey. Open the link and move down and there is an interview with the man himself. [url="http://www.watkinsguitars.co.uk/mp3downloads.htm"]http://www.watkinsguitars.co.uk/mp3downloads.htm[/url] Jez Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoonBassAlpha Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Lefty playing righty. Started on the violin, and I don't think there was ever a left handed option. My mum plays the fiddly righty and she's a lefty too. I play drums set up right too, though I did slightly favour my left foot for bass drum, but figured it would be easier if I ever wanted to kit share, but I've never got good enough to play drums in public for that to arise! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lanark Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 [quote name='MoonBassAlpha' post='1306943' date='Jul 17 2011, 07:06 PM']Lefty playing righty. [b]Started on the violin, and I don't think there was ever a left handed option.[/b] My mum plays the fiddly righty and she's a lefty too. I play drums set up right too, though I did slightly favour my left foot for bass drum, but figured it would be easier if I ever wanted to kit share, but I've never got good enough to play drums in public for that to arise![/quote] This is why I wonder if guitarists are a little strange in being so into left-handed instruments. I can't think of many other instruments that make left-handed version so much available. Left-handed pianos? Flutes? Violins? I've never seen any such things commercially available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spike Vincent Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Just to complicate things, I'm right handed playing lefty. Right handed instruments just feel utterly wrong and I can't play them. I believe Jimi Hendrix had the same problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannybuoy Posted July 17, 2011 Share Posted July 17, 2011 Makes sense to me. The fretting hand is the one that requires the most strength and dexterity. I bet more people would do the same if they were given a free choice from the beginning rather than being told "if you're right handed you must play like this". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad3353 Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Good evening, all... This subject comes up very often on the guitar and drum forums that I also frequent. I normally get 'blasted' for my, apparently, heretical comments, much on the lines of the above poster. I have yet to come across a lefty saxaphone, or piano (or computer keyboard; the list is long...) I have always thought that, starting from scratch, there is at least as much work for the left hand as for the right, and, if anything, there is some advantage in being dextrous with the fretting hand from the start. I have a fully lefty brother; he started on my (righty...) guitars, and very rapidly outshone me (OK, not very difficult, perhaps...). He had to work a bit harder on his picking (even strapping his fingers together to force the 3rd and pinky to work harder...). Just to confuse issues, I'm generally right-handed, but chose (after a couple of years 'normal'...) to set up my drums lefty, and have played them (cross-armed...) that way ever since (40-odd years...). Although I [i]can[/i], if forced, play righty, it just feels better that way. It was, however, a deliberate choice after trying 'normally'. I may take up my own challenge, just to see, by trying to play a 'lefty' guitar, just to see if it can be made to work out just by practice. I maintain that it is, but haven't had the 'balls' (or the guitar...) to try it on. Incidently, playing a right guitar left-handed (strung as a 'righty'...) is called 'Cotten picking', after Elizabeth Cotten, a real virtuose in this field. Here's a link or two... [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxhQntl6KSg&feature=related"]Elizabeth Cotten - 'Baby it ain't no lie'...[/url] [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5MTbScgKVE&feature=related"]Elizabeth Cotten - 'Spanish Flang Dang' and 'A Jig'[/url] ...enjoy... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danimal Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 (edited) [quote name='whynot' post='1306633' date='Jul 17 2011, 01:20 PM']Would like to think that was said in humour rather than knocking some of us without your ability.[/quote] Absolutely said in humour. Although you wouldn't expect to get a left-handed piano, would you? (EDIT: I see I was beaten to the punch with this one, at least twice. Should have expected that really). Edited July 18, 2011 by Danimal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seashell Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Me too, left hander playing right handed. I reckoned you have to use both hands anyway, so you might as well use your 'best' had for the fingerboard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jezzaboy Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 [quote name='dannybuoy' post='1307270' date='Jul 17 2011, 11:27 PM']Makes sense to me. The fretting hand is the one that requires the most strength and dexterity. I bet more people would do the same if they were given a free choice from the beginning rather than being told "if you're right handed you must play like this".[/quote] This makes a lot of sense. Before I started playing, I had a compound fracture of my left pinkie finger which has left me with no power down that side of my left hand and my pinkie is useless and the finger next to it is not much better. When I started playing 6 string guitar, I was unable to make the chord shapes due to the injury and I started to play bass because I could get away with using my first 2 fingers. When I started to get into the bass I did consider trying a leftie as my right hand is fine and may have worked out a lot better dexterity wise. Too late now though. Jez Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lanark Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 (edited) Well, here's why I think that left-handed guitarists are the exception, and are sometimes (not always - but definitely sometimes) convinced that because they write left-handed that MUST start on a left-handed guitar. There are no left-handed violins or flutes commercially made - at all, you'd have to have one made for you specially - and that's because if you're playing in an orchestra and you're playing left-handed you'll be clashing elbows with everyone else in your section. However, there's no evidence anywhere suggesting that leftys never take up the flute or the violin. When I imagine playing the violin, I imagine my fretting hand is my right-hand (despite using my right on the frets when playing bass) but - as I've never played a violin before, I really cannot imagine that it would be any more difficult to learn one way than the other, in the same way that I don't get a car built left-handed so that I can change gears with my right hand and steer with my left. If you don't have an option, you just get on with it. Everyone complaining about the dearth of left-handed models should be hoping on behalf of future generations of left-handed guitarists that rather than making the range slightly larger, they should stop making them completely and then they'd be able to play all those right-handed basses that are available everywhere. I genuinely suggest that in almost every case the reason that left-handed guitarists play a left-handed guitar is because they were given one first. Of course, I'm sure that there are exceptions - but that's what they'll be, exceptions. Oh - and while I'm left-handed myself, I expect to get flamed for this. Edited July 18, 2011 by lanark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whynot Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 It's all common sense really. The piano is a different instrument. Everything is laid out in front of you. I play a little keyboard and don't expect everything to be the other way round. I would suggest that there are rarely any left handed only violin players as the option was never there at the learning stage! Left handers that could adapt are the ones that play violin. The ones the could not or where it simply did not come naturally so were put off, don't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevB Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 This has come up on here lots of times before but yes I'm another predominantly lefty playing righty. I bought a cheap bass of someone and it was RH so that's how I taught myself. More dextrity in the fretting hand made perfect sense to me. However I do a lot of other things RH (mainly two handed things like cricket and golf when I played were always RH) but single handed things like writing or holding a spoon is LH (though knife and fork is always RH). I usually pick up a drinking glass with RH too. Lee Pomeroy has an odd set up on bass, he plays left handed but with strings on 'upside down'. I assume he started off playing RH instruments flipped upside down but didn't restring and then when could get hold of a proper LH instrument never went back to the normal string pattern. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bassbluestew Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Yup me too.................. Doesn't the guy from either Doves or Elbow ( always get them confused in my head ) play a r/h Pbass upside down and strung upside down too, i.e low E wher G should B ( see what I didi there.............................. ). And he sings. S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monckyman Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 It is Jimmy Goodwin with the upside down P.Just the way he learned. He can play guitar the same way. I`m another lefthander playing right handed basses, simply because I was unaware of the choice when I started playing. I don`t think it matters. Like the Pianists or drummers, you train your hands to do what you want and are essentially ambidextrous when playing an instrument. I came from a school that forced me to write with my right hand, (for my own good apparently) until my left handed mother took umbrage and bollocked them. I`m very comfortable playing right handed and it feels very natural, and allows me to noodle on lots of other instruments without problems. One thing I still have a problem with is peeling spuds... I peel right handed and cut the spuds with a knife in my left hand.. Good to know it`s fairly common. MM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gareth Hughes Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 I'm a lefty playing righty. Probably answers a lot of questions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commando Jack Posted July 18, 2011 Share Posted July 18, 2011 Lefty playing all his instruments righty. Sometimes I wonder if I am only left handed because the teacher at the front of the class said "hold your pencil in your right hand" and, not knowing what "right" was, I just held it up on the same side as her. Of course, that would be the mirror image, and my left! The only reason I wonder this is because whenever I approach a new task, I feel at least as comfortable using either hand, and tend to use the more convenient hand or the first one I attempt the task with. For intruments, the more convenient way is right handed for the many reasons discussed above. Oh and the left handed piano has been around for a while ([url="http://www.lefthandedpiano.com/"]Link Here[/url]), but is not a commercially available instrument. It is essentially a mirror image of a normal keyboard, with the higher keys on the left. And to the OP, where's the poll??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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