I think I posted this in one of teh previous lefty/righty threads but here it is again...
One VERY good banjo player (normal right handed guy) started showing at local jam sessions with left handed banjo while he played gigs right handed. I heard the he had some problems with his left or right hand (carpal tunnel or such) and tried to use other hand. It took him something like a year or so to completely go from righty to lefty and his playing is just as goo as ever, and he is really good.
Adrian
Am a lefty, and have been playing righty mandolin for decades. Never thought of it as a problem. I feel quite comfortable with my lefthanded fretboard dexterity, and my righthanded tremolo is pretty decent. Couldn't imagine tremolo-ing with my left hand. I also bat righty and swing a golf club with my right hand. I guess it's what you're used to.
Servus
Lefty guit-picker here! (A Guild guy, as you know.)
Played guitar right-handed for over 45 years before trying mando. I play mando right-handed, too. It just feels more natural.
My right hand is stupid, so I treat it like a special ed student and give it lots of attention. The challenges I've encountered on mandolin mostly have to do with learning to play scales that are seven frets wide. The reach is easy because the frets are space closely, but thinking seven-wide and remembering not to use guitar patterns is murder.
The good news is that mando scales are very logical — mando is to guitar as Latin is to English.
And I can't hold a pick the way Mike Marshall says to. So I either hold it like a guitar pick or use finger picks. To sort of answer your speed question, finger picks are faster for me than flat picks, both on guitar and mandolin, because my hand doesn't have to move as much.
For tremolo, the pick isn't supposed to hit the string flat, like you'd hit a guitar string. Angling it reduced friction, so it increases speed. (They say. I don't think about picks or grips or posture when I'm playing. Not a pro!)
Most mandolinistas seem to be obsessed with picks. Go figure.
Gibson A-Junior snakehead (Keep on pluckin'!)
" remembering not to use guitar patterns is murder. "
That's something I was wondering about.
I claim to be left handed but not severely so. It saves battles with people that think I'm denying some inner predestination. In fact the more instruments I play the less dominant either hand becomes, in my case. I play righty guitar, banjer, fiddle, bass, mandolin, more recently piano. ( there really are a few left-handed pianos, believe it or not)
Another believe it or not: I worked in an assembly department, where I would often have to thread nuts onto bolts, in situations where one could never visually see one or the other, or both. One learns to see with one's fingertips. This type of synesthesia can really help one's playing. Did for me.
We have a close musician friend -- a fine musician -- who is left handed and plays left handed with standard right handed instruments. He plays mandolin, guitar and double bass. All standard instruments, standard tuning, played upside-down or backwards. It's amazing to watch him play.
I'd say it all depends on what you get used to.
Question: Are you typing right handed or left handed on your computer keyboard??? Interesting to think about.
(Pads and phones don't count! )
-- Don
"Music: A minor auditory irritation occasionally characterized as pleasant."
"It is a lot more fun to make music than it is to argue about it."
2002 Gibson F-9
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1975 Suzuki taterbug (plus many other noisemakers)
[About how I tune my mandolins]
[Our recent arrival]
Lefty playing right handed for my entire life, I shoot lefty go figure?
I’m an ambidextrous drinker though.
And I’ve never seen a left handed piano, or pretty much any keyboard.
The touch pad on my iPad is standard oriented as well.
Timothy F. Lewis
"If brains was lard, that boy couldn't grease a very big skillet" J.D. Clampett
https://youtu.be/uIgO4LqvU-0
Not as rare as one would think.
I find this discussion interesting, and probably something I'm going to need to think about with my daughter if she pursues music. I think assuredly everyone is a little bit different, but I guess my thought is... the whole process of playing an instrument is so foreign when you start-- both hands are kind of helpless-- I don't guess I see where teaching them both from scratch would make much of a difference. But this is where memory fails us-- I'm sure many of us don't remember exactly what it's like when we first started playing. I think my advice to a lefty would be to see how it feels playing a right handed instrument and stick with it unless you absolutely feel you can't progress that way. There is such a limitation on instrument choice to lefties-- and the inability to just trade instruments at a jam-- etc etc.
I am also a lefty playing righty. But I'm not ambidextrous--I'm ambiclumsy.
Well, there are exceptions to just about every rule, I still say that it limits the ability for people to play commonly available instruments. You need both hands, you are learning something new, I’m absolutely don’t with this subject. I’m just tired of it. Play music, enjoy it. That’s fine.
Timothy F. Lewis
"If brains was lard, that boy couldn't grease a very big skillet" J.D. Clampett
Spent a couple days watching and learning music from Dwight Lamb from Iowa recently. He plays a right handed fiddle left handed. It is very interesting to watch. But he plays his Hohner diatonic accordion right handed.
I may have initially tried the bass left handed, but was quickly switched over. Most orchestras don't easily accept a left handed player.
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