[geeks] Any left handed guitar players out there?

[der Mouse]

> Is anyone here a left handed guitar player?

Not me; I'm not any kind of guitar player.  But I know someone who
knows guitar - he spent years working as a guitar tech for bands big
enough to tour Canada, for example.  I asked him.

Some of the best guitarists on the planet are lefties playing
"right-handed".  The hands play very different roles, but it's hard to
call either subservient to the other, and indeed it arguably makes more
sense for the dominant hand to be the one on the fretboard rather than
the one strumming/picking.  So don't assume that just because your son
is left-handed means he needs to play "left-handed".  (Of course, this
doesn't apply if this isn't an assumption, if this has already been
considered.)  As a non-guitarist, I find both positions to be
approximately equally difficult in my imagination, fwtmbw.

> My son wants to learn the guitar.  We bought him a used left handed
> guitar, and am trying to figure out what instruction would be best
> for him.

Personally, if an instructor isn't just as capable of teaching someone
to play left-handed as right-handed, I'd be looking for another
instructor.  There really isn't much difference: the strings are strung
in the other order, and (except for traditional acoustic guitars, which
are basically symmetric) things like controls and body cutouts are on
the other side, but the only significant difference, if you're used to
neither, between playing left-handed and playing right-handed is how
you map fingering diagrams to finger positions.

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