Being a LEFT HANDED musician I have accepted the fact that musical instruments especially the guitar are designed for the right handed player. Everyday tools and conveniences are designed and built with no regard to lefty's such as power saws, water fountains pay phones and even firearms. The list goes on.
When I was around the age of twelve my parents bought me a cheap guitar for Christmas which of course was a right handed guitar. Not wanting to learn to play right handed, I changed the strings around as most left handers do. To no avail I found it hard to make certain chords and thus hindered my learning. I soon gave up the idea and the guitar went into the closet. Years later at around age twenty one I started fooling around with my brothers guitar. Since it didn't belong to me I couldn't change the strings so I started learning to make chords backwards and playing left handed. After I had learned to make a few basic chords and strum them clearly I was determined to go all the way regardless of my so called handicap. I bought my own right handed guitar and was soon learning to play it upside down. I was soon playing my favorite songs. In the early days though I only strummed chords but that was enough to get by. By the time I could play all of the major, minor, sharps and seventh chords I was ready to learn to play some lead. A friend told me that a good place to learn guitar was at a bluegrass festival. I started attending festivals and learning the old songs. I first learned the song "Wild Wood Flower" by the Carter Family. It was a simple three chord song and not too difficult to play the lead melody. Soon after that came old standards like "Home Sweet Home" and "Cripple Creek" also three chord songs and easy to learn a lead melody. I became sort of an oddity as I played around the campsites at festivals and always heard comments like, "Did you know that you're playing that guitar upside down?" Well Duh! It was funny to see people tilt their heads like a puzzled dog as I played. Other musicians would not look at me while they were playing because I would throw them off. They couldn't tell what I was doing. I got a kick out of that. I eventually taught myself to play "Flat pick" and "Finger Pick" style guitar. I also play acoustic slide guitar. In the past few years I started writing my own music and have recorded a CD titled "The Lighter Side Of Poverty". I wrote all of the songs, provide the vocals and play all of the right handed instruments on the CD. This is an on going blog to provide beginning and intermediate lefty musicians tips and techniques to make your learning experience a little easier in a right handed world. Please email me with questions or comments about playing a right handed guitar left handed at: bwillis@benwillismusic.com