Guitar Teachers Near Me in Philadelphia
Right or left? Know which hand dominates your guitar playing abilities
Guitars come in right-handed and left-handed varieties. If you are left-handed, you need to think carefully about which guitar is right for you to learn. Most people who pick up a guitar don’t immediately know what guitar to use because they don’t have a tendency for either right-handed or left-handed playing. Regardless of what hand you write with, it does not mean that will be your dominant guitar playing role. When you take guitar lessons in Philadelphia, a good teacher will not tell you that if you are right-handed you should only play a right-handed guitar. There are some left-handed people who play golf right-handed. Guitar playing is the same way.
Most people who are interested in learning guitar go out and just buy one, normally the right-handed kind, without necessarily even knowing that there is a difference. If you are right-handed and it is the hand you dominant most activities with, chances are you will find a right-handed guitar to be suitable for you. If you are left-handed and the same holds true, get a left-handed guitar. However, if you aren’t sure because you do some activities with your dominant hand but others with your other hand, you may have to spend some time figuring that out.
Beginners spend a lot of time struggling to put together chords, learn scales and sequences of notes as well as perform other techniques. All of these are performed with what is called the fretting hand, which is the left hand on a right-handed guitar. Therefore it can be hard for the beginner to see why the other hand, or the plucking hand, is normally considered the dominant hand in guitar playing. Guitar playing demands a lot from both hands and there is a reason why the picking (strumming) hand is considered the dominant hand.
The fret hand is the hand that must quickly switch between notes and chords while the picking hand has to quickly and accurately pluck notes, accurately target the guitar string and hit it every time, play complex patterns, keep the time accurate and play without looking at the picking hand because more focus needs to go to the fret hand. This is why your dominant hand is for the plucking hand.
Another way to look at it is that the fret hand is dominant in the beginning. As you begin, you will learn chords and simple melodies, which may require more attention on the fret hand. But, as you advance forward, you will notice that your picking hand technique takes more and more focus. Therefore, it is extremely important to understand how you will be able to play so that your eventual dominant hand is king.
At the David Joel Guitar Studio, we will help you figure out what hand dominates the guitar for you. When you are looking for guitar lessons in Philadelphia, you can trust us to help you make the right decision. Or maybe we should all just be like Jimi Hendrix and play our right-handed guitar upside down to accommodate our left-handed dominance. Hey, it worked for him!