Just a quick note this.
I get about 3 or 4 emails a week from left handed beginner guitarists along the lines of..
I'd love to learn from your over-the -shoulder videos but find it impossible because everything is reversed.
It never occured to me that a conventional guitar tuition video showing a 'face on' shot is actually of more use to a left hander than a right hander...since they (left handers) are watching a mirror image whereas a right hander has to mentally reverse the images.
When I came up with the over-the-shoulder shot I immediately made life more difficult for the left handed player so.....
After a bit of head scratching I have a solution. Promise not to laugh, because this REALLY WORKS.
Get a big mirror and stand it to one side of your monitor at 90 degrees to the screen. Now watch my videos in the mirror....hey presto....instant solution.
Let me know how you get on with this.
Mike.
P.S. Has anyone else noticed that eerie feeling when you've learned a piece from the over-the -shoulder videos and you're playing along whilst watching. It feels a bit like playing a virtual guitar. Very strange.
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6 comments:
I am a lefty and when I first started out (about 6 months ago) I had a torrid time trying to grok fingering diagrams.
I used a lefty chord book PDF for the first couple of weeks but decided to "bite the bullet" and work directly with right-oriented materials. Primarily because there is sooo much of it out there compared to lefty-oriented stuff.
I'm glad I did. I don't know what my brain does now but it maps the right-oriented stuff to left-oriented en route from eyes to fingers. Recently I revisited the lefty-oriented chord book and it looks very, very odd :-)
The brain is an amazing thing and it can get quickly get used to all sorts of things. The over-the-shoulder videos included.
Case in point: all the righty-oriented guitar players who sit opposite someone playing and do the mapping in their heads:-)
Sean
Hi All,
Mike, sorry, the mirror ideas made me laugh especially when I tried it upside down, but to be honest you can't reverse a picture in this way. Looking at the strumming hand (without a mirror) the picture is good for me (a left hander) as it's a mirror image but the over the shoulder shot still looks down the frets from low (6th string) E and masks the frets and fingers below. I’m sure this must be the case for the right hander as well so some'll love it and some'll hate it.
I guess this is one dilemma destined to remain exactly that.
We left handers have always found it difficult to live in a right handed world especially when using tools like hammers. screwdrivers and pliers, sob! sob! sob!
I'll try some 3D glasses next---better not it'll remind me of that awful JAWS 3D movie
TTFN,
Spock.
I am a big time lefty, I think I would starve to death if I broke my left hand cause I wouldn't be able to feed myself with my right hand. Funny thing though it seems perfectly natural to play the guitar right handed. I find it very difficult to form the cords with my right hand. It is the only thing I do right handed! Weird, just like everyone thinks us lefties are anyway!!
Don
greetings from australia mike. i think your videos are terrific,however some of your tabs are a little different to the tabs i have of the same song,but this doesn't mean you are wrong. i wish this technology was around 20 years ago.keep up the great work
I'm in an extreme minority...but I'm a lefty who decided to learn how to play upside down. I take a righty guitar, and without restringing it or anything...I play it as a lefty. So the high strings are literally higher than the lower strings.
This may make it harder for me to perform certain fingering, but it makes it possible for me to go to anyone's house and begin playing their guitar instead of lugging a lefty guitar everywhere I want to play.
Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that even with my extremely odd way of playing, I still find the Classical Gas tutorial video on Youtube to be extremely easy to learn from. If you can't figure out where the finger is supposed to be...you can listen to the strings being plucked and figure it out yourself. The vids are slow enough that you can pick out the notes.
I don't know if this is true or not
but two guitar instructors and they are good ones, say that if a
person left or right handed thats never played the guitar would no memory of the guitar in their hands and so theres no reason not to teach them to play righthanded.I know I'm lefthanded and my first guitar was a cheap department store model and there was no cheap lefthanded guitars when I was a kid and I play very well righthanded!
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