Forums > Feature requests for guitar.com > Wondering for advice from switching lefty to righty
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Forums > Feature requests for guitar.com > Wondering for advice from switching lefty to righty
Original message:252 days 38 minutes ago
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Member: Gavalin
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Hi, I've been playing guitar for a while now, and I've notice the limited options of guitars for Lefty's and was wondering if anybody can give advice to help me switch? I've tried for a long time but what's funny is my brain knows what to do but my hands don't.
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Reply:252 days 16 minutes ago
Member: JTC
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You shoud not try to switch.
Someone here has a blog about their attempt at it but I forget who. The result was alot of struggle with no results.

Playing left handed is not a disadvantage as far as playing goes. But I do see the selection of left handed guitars being a limiting factor. I mean, when you go to the guitar shop to pick out a guitar you can't expect them to stock a huge selection of lefties for you to try out. Sure you can order a lefty but the point is to play a number of guitars before you buy.
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Reply:252 days 7 minutes ago
Member: Bryon Olson
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my advice, don't. there is no point except for the limited selection of the guitars. its too much work with the same results as you have now. Hell, pull a Jimi and resting a right handed guitar right.
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Reply:251 days 23 hours 58 minutes ago
Member: evol666
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I advise against switching too. I know one person that switched, my old bass player, and he plays bass (duh!). The explanation is two fold. One, he did it before he was 20 because the music director at his community college forced him to and two, he practiced nonstop for months to be able to do it.

Trust me, it's not worth it. I know quite a few lefties and they all crafty players who managed to find sweet left handed axes.
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One thing you don't do is let the singer have creative input on any fucking thing, because they're useless - Noel Gallagher
Reply:251 days 12 hours 28 minutes ago
Member: ibzRG
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The one who attempted this several months ago would be me. Except that I was switching from right to left, as an experiment.
http://www.guitar.com/kimonf/blog/personal_log_learning_to_play_lefthanded

Long story short, don't do it. I might have suggested otherwise if you hadn't "been playing for a while". Unless you're still totally clumsy and can't really play.

Learning guitar is one thing. It involves conditioning your brain and each individual hand to respond in a certain way to the point where the mental processing for playing is reduced to a mere reflex. Switching hands is more than re-learning everything from absolute zero. Your starting point will be sub-zero, meaning that first you have to UN-learn guitar before you can relearn it. Because your brain will already know how to play, it will keep sending automatically the same instructions to the same hands as it is used to. It takes unimaginable amounts of focus and effort to get your hands to swap roles. The amount of energy it takes would be better used to advance your lefty playing and make you a much better player. Un-learning is a b!tch and more frustrating than learning because you know you could be spending your time playing something instead of struggling with your conditioned brain and muscles.
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Listen to my music!Listen to my music!
Reply:251 days 9 hours 47 minutes ago
Member: JTC
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Sorry I didn't remember that was you ibz.
If I weren't so lazy I'd have gone back and searched for the posts and blog related to it.
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