Playing right-handed as a lefty?

Add another to the ranks of lefties playing standard instruments. When I started with guitar classes as a kid, my first teacher told my parents to just have me play standard. Honestly, I think it helped me improve my overall dexterity in both hands to play that way. I've always focused on fingerstyle playing, even with guitar. So that forced me to be more precise with what I did with my right hand.

When I started this thread, I was thinking about switching to left-handed ukulele, but now decided not to.

So, this has been helpful. Thanks, guys!

I'm a southpaw and way back in my youth when I started playing bass I decided to just play "wrong handed" as I felt, for me, it would be easier than having to re-string my instrument and read tablature upside down. I never could get my right wrist to work correctly with a pick, but I learned how to pluck the strings with my first 3 fingers, like Steve Harris of Iron Maiden (at least that's whom I was attempting to emulate.) Anyway, now that I'm learning the ukulele I am continuing to play this way.

I have had two challenges in learning the ukulele--I'm left-handed and over 75 years old. I did not even think twice about playing the ukulele right-handed. There are so many resources for right handers and so few for left handed players. Instructors turn their heads upside down to try to imagine what to tell you to do to chord using your right hand. It was right-handed for me from the start.

I have spent a couple of years getting the cords down; old hands are somewhat inflexible. Bb is a particularly hard one to get. But I am making progress. Only lately have turned my attention to strumming and have found that is a problem for me, particularly if I want to sing as well as play. I have to stick to simple strum patterns--DDuDu and DDuddu and the like. I just can't do the more complex stuff and keep up the beat.

My recommendation to young and old left-handers is play right handed. It's good for your brain development.

I am lefthanded and play "righthanded" both ukulele and guitar
The moves of the left hand while playing are then the advanced movements.
The tight hand strums or picks a pattern, once that pattern is learned it stays, the changing of chords
At what might be very short intervals and or holding Barre chords for extended periods of time require more from the hand

So it has always been natural for me to play "righthanded"

I started playing piano - then double bass - then accordion. Not an option really to play orchestral instruments lefty - so never considered it on uke.

One size doesn't fit all.

Just compelled to chime in : ) I do everything righty. There is nothing that I do that is as a lefty would...except musical things. I play all stringed instruments lefty, and have been playing for 50 years and as a professional musician on guitars and basses for most of my adult life. I have some theories about left/right handedness as it applies to music, and I think it's a mistake to assume that our stronger hand or more coordinated one is the one that dictates which way we are naturally born to play (as opposed to which way we decide to play, which I think is fine too). There are many great drummers who play lefty and reverse their kit, but there are also many who play true lefty (with the right hand hitting the snare and the left riding on the cymbals and hi hat) who don't change the righty drum positions. When I sit at a drum kit the backbeat, the snare, is definitely rooted in my right hand. Since no one wants you to mess with the drum setup : ) I have gotten used to being more or less righty in my feet, since the right foot is on the kick drum pedal with a "normal" righty kit, but that's ok with me because my right foot is for sure my more coordinated and stronger foot, Always kicked righty growing up in soccer. It's not where my downbeat is naturally but I've learned to fudge that a bit when I get a chance to sit on a drum kit. But my left hand is doing the steady cymbals and right is doing the snare, as a natural (musical) lefty. When I used to give lessons there was always the question parents had about the lefty child and should they play lefty? What I would do is have them play a simple drum beat on the table, just a simple boom-chack- boom boom- chack thing. And nearly always, with both right and left handed kids, the "boom", the downbeat bass drum, would be be with their right hand and the "chack", or backbeats/snares would be with their left hand. Only maybe two times out of all the times I did this were the kids not natural "righty" musically, as in to which hands functions and roles fell.

Strumming/picking or fingering with a certain hand doesn't necessarily line up with what one's natural music side is. It's a different thing, a different internal guide than the one that determines which hand we are inclined to for writing or throwing or which foot for kicking. I don't have any real scientific proof of any of this : ) it's just from my observations of being a total righty in one world and a total lefty in another, and I find it very interesting. One funny thing is that many of my friends are people who I know through playing music together, and they identify me as a lefty person, which I don't at all. And when they see me doing something, then maybe everything else righty they think it's very strange. But I don't. It's just the way it is : )

It's amazing to read the stories of so many other left handed people playing right handed. Ive always told people it's because I'm the youngest of 5 kids and always got things like right handed baseball gloves as a kid. I write and eat left handed. I play sports right handed.
Last week I went to an autoharp gathering and discovered that I can play it in the standard position as a righty and in the lap position as either a leftie or a righty.

Another lefty playing righty here - one year on uke, 50 on guitar. I do think that having my less coordinated (or at least weaker) right hand be used for picking has made it harder for me to learn fingerpicking. (Or at least that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.)

I'm another lefty that plays right handed. I'm pretty new to ukulele, but have tinkered with guitar and bass in the past and have always played right handed. Personally, I think the human body can get used to just about anything with practice and persistence, even the E major chord on a uke, which is my current nemesis . It's about muscle memory and not giving up.

I am a lefty in a right handed world. I have been forced to use my right hand on many things because of the way the world is. I can't use left handed scissors because they didn't have such things when I was growing up. Right handed scissors hurt my hand.

I write and eat left handed. I crochet left handed. But I knit and play musical instruments right handed.

I agree about struggling to do finger picking. I hadn't thought about that. I think it is a left handed handicap so to speak. I think it even affects my strumming. I do ok with strumming unless I start thinking about it.

Jan,
You're going to think this is crazy...
I eat and write (or print) left handed.
If I try either right handed, it's a mess.
Everything else, including playing uke, I do right handed.
Weird, huh?

Nickie said:

Jan,
You're going to think this is crazy...
I eat and write (or print) left handed.
If I try either right handed, it's a mess.
Everything else, including playing uke, I do right handed.
Weird, huh?

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Sounds familiar! I absolutely can't eat or write right handed! I also hold the phone in my left hand. It's like my right ear just doesn't hear as well since I am left handed!

Chopped Liver said:

Sounds familiar! I absolutely can't eat or write right handed! I also hold the phone in my left hand. It's like my right ear just doesn't hear as well since I am left handed!

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Hmmmm....I got into the habit of telephoning right handed, so I could write things down while talking/listening.

Nickie said:

Hmmmm....I got into the habit of telephoning right handed, so I could write things down while talking/listening.

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If I need to write something down, I hold the phone in my right hand - but to my left ear!

Lefty here. There are only a few things I do right handed, among them are cutting with scissors and playing ukulele. I agree with the post that the human body can adapt to most things, especially at a young age. As a child we had lots of fancy scissors in the house (mom was a dressmaker) which were designed for the right hand. So you just learn to use the tool in the hand that's more comfortable. When I was about 9 years old I took guitar lessons from a neighbor. I remember telling him I'm a lefty which he quickly dismissed with, "ok let's get started". When I picked up the uke a million years later it seemed natural to play righty. Like some point there have said, using my strong hand for fretting has been an advantage.

I just ordered a Martin T1K Lefty! Can't wait!!

I'm a lefty who just flips a regular (righty) strung uke over so that it points in the opposite direction, without re-arranging the strings. So, my strumming hand is my left, and my fretting hand is my right. And in the re-entrant "gCEA" tuning, for instance, the string closest to my chin is the A...

Pirate Jim said:

The argument that playing right handed should be easier for lefties because your fretting hand is then your dominant hand has always made me chuckle. By the very same logic, every right hander would be restringing left handed as it would be easier!

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I think about all of the orchestral string players who all play with the left hand as their "fingering" hand.