I’m Claire, 37, I started my guitar journey as a kid when I found my dads old acoustic guitar he played before I was born, which led to many failed attempts of trying to learn how to play it. I finally got a guitar of my own, a jazzmaster, in my 20s and spent a while learning to play right handed but got frustrated with diffuculty making progress. Eventually I realized playing lefthanded is way more natural for me, so I completely started over from scratch and had a lot more success. Now in my 30s I’m even more passionate about playing than ever and was recommed Justin Guitar by enough people that it seemed worth a try.
Welcome Claire! I am a lefty who decided to play right handed. I feel comfortable with that choice, but guess I’ll never know if I could have done better the other way. I tried to play a left handed model at a guitar shop once and was totally befuddled. Left? Right? It’s all about having fun and growing here in Justin Guitar Land.
Right on Clair. That cool you kept up with It and switched over. That tells me you are very dedicated wanting to play, thats really awesome. I am so glad you found the forums. Super cool group here, lots of suportive friendly people. Have a cool adventure
Welcome Claire! You certainly have the passion, hang around here and you’ll find lots of support and enthusiasm. Hope to hear from you as your journey progresses.
I reflexively held guitars righthanded having been handed them from such an early age but I would always hit a plateau where basic strumming and rhythm and even just holding the pick were basically impossible for me. So I restrung my guitar backwards and within a few days I had eclipsed months/years worth of pracitce. Even fretting was more comfortable with my right hand.
It was really frustrating for a long time but I feel like I’m finally at the point where I broke through the initial barriers and it actually started to make sense.
Good for you. I can’t imagine doing rapid changes or barre chords with my right hand. I can barely operate a right handed can opener! Interestingly, while I do find fast strumming and double strums a challenge, I find that my fine motor skills on my weaker hand are good, so playing finger style feels pretty natural. Fortunately I like blues, singer-songwriter and rock songs from decades before you were born @lefty_offset, so I’ll leave the shredding to others!
Hope to hear from you as your journey progresses.
Claire Welcome welcome welcome to Justin guitar community