For a long time, left-handers were subjected to real discrimination. In the Middle Ages, a person with a better left hand than his right could be accused of witchcraft and connections with the devil. They tried to retrain left-handers, but at the end of the 20th century, everything changed and many products appeared for left-handers, including special scissors and bottle openers. There are also special guitars for them.
The guitar is one of the most widespread musical instruments on the planet. Due to its fairly wide range and relative simplicity of the game, it has become popular in a variety of styles of music - from flamenco to black metal. There are dozens of guitars available. Many popular rock musicians have their own instruments made by renowned manufacturers especially for them.
How did lefties play guitar before?
Many famous guitarists are left-handed: for example, Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain.
The abundance of left-handed musicians is not surprising, because the left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, which is responsible for creativity and imagination.
At first, left-handers played ordinary guitars, there was no difference. You just had to put the strings in reverse order to easily pick any chords in the mirror image. Classic guitars and dreadnought guitars do not have a cutout for ease of play, their bodies are mirror-symmetrical, so there were no problems. With the advent of jumbo guitars, as well as electric guitars, whose bodies are asymmetrical about the longitudinal axis, the situation has changed.
Features of left-handed guitars
The market now offers a variety of guitars for people with better left-hand skills. Essentially, a left-handed guitar is a mirror image of a regular guitar. A strap holder, a cord socket, a string tensioner, a notch for the hand, and often the tuning pegs, are on the other side, back to how they are on a regular guitar. Bass guitars are made in the same way. There are far fewer "left-handed" guitars than traditional ones, since there are few left-handed guitars compared to right-handed ones.
Not all left-handed people buy left-handed tools. So, Hendrix played all his life on an ordinary Stratocaster designed for a right-hander, only tugged the strings in the opposite order. However, he could play perfectly well on the strings stretched under the right-hander, as his contemporaries repeatedly spoke about. Bluesman Albert King also played on the strings stretched in this way.
As a child, they tried to retrain Albert King to be right-handed. Nothing came of it, but an original manner of playing appeared (King took an ordinary right-handed guitar, without pulling the strings, and played it with his left hand).
By the way, on the Web, you can easily find a free guitar lesson especially for people with a dominant left hand.
