Hello! I’m left handed and have tried to learn right hand picking for ages and was never able to make great progress. I bought a left handed guitar recently and my left hand picking moves fine but the right hand is obviously taking some work. At the same time I would still like to master right hand picking but can’t. Anyone else gave this problem? I’ve been doing teacher critiques ever since Feb and not having any breakthroughs. I don’t know if it’s a strength issue or what. I’ve been recording myself and it’s absolutely painful to watch in slow-mo. I can clearly see so many problems but everything I try doesn’t work. My finger joints especially in my thumb begin uncontrollably moving really bad. Almost like a complete circular motion. I’ve been trying reverse dart thrower and I can get my wrist moving right but in order to do that I have to scarfice control of the joints in my hand. This motion has to be screwing me up. Meanwhile my left hand picking is fine without practice! Anyways I’ve seen some people on here posting about being left handed and I was wondering what their experiences are like. Thanks!
I’m left handed too, tho I’m what is apparently called cross dominant. Which is where you use each hand for different tasks rather than one hand for most tasks.
What would you say your are? pure left? or some mix?
Most guitar technique is very light handed, so using very little force, it won’t be muscle strength, but nervous system control. One thing I’ve done to increase my right hand control is use a mouse regularly right handed. The movements are very close to picking technique.
And I also believe learning a new task like guitar picking isn’t dependent on what hand you use most, the brain and body will adapt with enough years. It takes a couple years for your nervous system to really adapt to something to the point you feel comfortable with if naturally. How long have you been playing right handed?
Thanks WhammyStarScream! I would say I’m purely left handed. About how many years I’ve been playing right handed here comes the scary part! Almost 20 years with no big breakthroughs. I forgot to add in my other post that I actually can tremolo pick with my right hand in the ranges of 140-160 but that’s it. Slowing that technique down feels impossible which is what I’ve been working on. The only time I saw progress was switching to left hand and I didn’t even have to practice. Just like that I can pick from about 190-50 bpm.
That’s interesting what you said about light touch. I’ve been thinking about that because my left hand is lighter I think! It’s just frustrating! Feels like every door you open and explore is closed in your face. Do you feel you would pick better with your left hand? Thanks!
I don’t feel I’d pick better with my left,as I’ve put so much work into my right to pick.
But I definitely feel I’d fret better with my right, infact I can stretch farther and fret faster with my right, and fretting is the most important part of guitar playing.
But it would take longer than I’m willing to reverse everything even if it eventually meant I could play with more control. I’m fine with playing right handed. I don’t need to be a guitar god to be satisfied with my playing, I can play fast enough as is, though thats with a lot of work on it.
Sweeping and trills is where I think switching to lefty would really help me, my right hand is just faster and stronger than left, tho I do all delicate fine detail tasks with my left. So it might only feel that way.
The main thing thats helped my playing is downward pick slanting, or usx/up stroke escape, and pull offs.
That way I don’t have to have a super controlled right hand, because a lot of the notes aren’t picked.
Perhaps because I’m cross dominant I can’t give much advice to a pure lefty or righty, I’ve not thought about that much. I’ve always thought people can learn with practice no matter the hand, I might be wrong tho, you’ve far more years playing than me. Tho I do know practice and when you first picked up the guitar are two different things.
You could always just do it as they say, just play lefty, in a few months of frustration and awkwardness you should be able to tell if it’s going to work out. You know your body better than anyone.
Though I should point out the entirety of my years of focused guitar practice has been in light of people like Troy who have shown the various picking techniques high level players use. So I have been using that knowledge constantly to inform my picking for 8 solid years, if you’ve only just started with Troy’s stuff I know it will help, helped me. What is your picking Technique? Can you post a video?
I could post one. Does that have to be through YouTube? I already have a bunch of videos on my teacher crituques
I can see some vids from your profile
What I see right away is you’re not anchored. So you’ve not got any mechanical leverage to fine tune your movement. Is that how you always pick? the whole hand moving? Elbow picking basically. If you’re going to float like that its really helpful to pick with rotation rather that up n down.
A great way to think about it is writing, most of us will plant or anchor the palm to allow fine details, using the elbow and floating like Japanese calligraphy is difficult to control.
That’s actually an older one. I’m no longer doing that. I’ll try to get one posted on YouTube. I use Reverse dart thrower. DSX with an upward pick slant
I’m severely left-handed (and play guitar lefty), but I have some thoughts based on when I learned to play piano. I found working my right hand at least 5 times more than my left hand finally resulted in a solid right hand after about two years. Thereafter, I continued to work my right hand about twice as often as my left. Bottomline, it took me an incredible amount of reps with my right to balance the two hands.
Thanks Dougb! Did you start out playing guitar left handed or did you try right handed first and then switched? I’m wondering how many left handed players tried with right hand and then gave up? I have a feeling it’s alot
3 fingers on the pick? If it’s that I find doing usx three fingers is much faster than dsx. Though I’ve never really practiced it so be intresting to see your video.
I tried that out and didn’t have progress. I mean it’s like literally everything I try: elbow, wrist, rotational forearm, using a fist, having extended fingers, anchoring fingers on the bridge, using the trailing edge of the pick and no progress. What’s really frustrating is I can clearly see a lot of problems when I record myself like all those finger joints firing away and flexing while I play. So I’ve then pinpointed the problem but cannot physically do it right. I try and try and just keep on doing the bad motions over and over again. I’m pretty positive the problem is all these unwanted finger joints firing away uncontrollably. In a Michael Angelo Batio video he mentions that and that’s like the kiss of death. At this point I think there’s something wrong with my right hand physically. When I use my wrist all these unwanted joints in my hand start moving. That has to be really screwing up my picking
Video prob the only way to see what up then. Or you making that leap n going full lefty 
You can always do a Jimmy hendrix instead of selling guitars
Thanks! I’ll try to post that tonight. At this point I am tempted to totally ditch right hand. It’s hard starting over but I’m already seeing progress with left hand playing. The right hand fretting is a tough but that’s already better progress then the right hand which is like zero progress at all
Here’s two videos. The first one is right hand reverse dart thrower DSX with an upward pick slant. The slower I go the more screwed up it gets to where you can see my thumb and index finger are flexing more and more almost like I’m pulling a trigger.
The second video is my left hand picking which is elbow fast but wrist at slower speeds.
One thing to remember is there’s nothing wrong with using your fingers at lower speeds. Everyone does it, using fingers at slow speeds is normal and effective. When you speed up ofcourse stuff tends to lock and stiffen up. MAB talks about this in some videos.
The left hand picking does look more relaxed, tho it’s better quality and You head isn’t in it looking like you’re straining hard lol so that might change the mood.
My advice whatever you end up doing is anchor some way on the guitar with your hand, not just your forarm, just like how people use leavers to move heavy and light weights in a controlled manner, same applies to your hand, if you have a pivot point/an anchor, you will have far more control with the pick. Maybe weight is not a great analogy but you know what I mean.
And if I was doing this I’d add forarm rotation. Try and pick by turning your forarm instead of moving your elbow.
Apologies for the amateur video, recording half naked in bed is my Forte. This should help a lot if you add forarm rotation. Doing just the elbow is bound to cause issues.
It’s a mix between forarm rotation and flexion extension of the wrist. Thats how most people shred on the guitar. It’s a very natural motion. And you can anchor almost anywhere on the guitar with your hand, fingers/palm/whatever and it will work well.
I had a go at a CtC angle but the cam gets hit by the strings. Hopefully it helps a bit.
Certainly not a professional player or video maker lol
Vid messed up sorry
I fiddled around for a few days on my wife’s righty. I’m glad I went lefty, but I would never try to persuade anyone one way or another. (There are many articles on the cons of playing lefty.) Good luck!
Hi Jswirag.
From what I see from your right hand video, I would definitely suggest some rethinking of the technique with the right hand. The direction of your upstrokes is way too much towards the guitar body, and the pick barely clears the string (sometimes it evens chokes the sound). Playing that way the strings and the body of the guitar limits your movement with every upstroke, and that’s why you have the feeling of having to fight to pick… you are actually fighting the guitar!!!
Try to lessen the angle a bit and make your pick movement a little bit more parallel to the guitar body. That’s what you are doing with your left hand, and the reason it sounds cleaner and more free.
If the video don’t help say, I know my set up is terrible. But adding an anchor and rotation is bound to help. It’s the way our hands naturally move doing delicate movements, just like writing with a pen the movements are very similar, elbow picking is inaccurate and slow. At least in my experience.
