Lefty plays righty: thoughts and insights

Playing Technique
#1

First-time poster.

I’ve made my living as a session and touring player my whole life, always making more out of good tone, legato styles, musicality and taste than any kind of blazing right-hand technique. But I want to get a few more things together.

I started playing on a right-handed guitar at 6 and stuck with that, but went on a few technical journeys over the years. Had a lot of private and University instruction where well-meaning instructors tried to change my technique (I defaulted to no edge picking at first, then a rather extreme Benson style with massive edge picking–pick almost vertical–then what TG calls “angle pad grip” with DWPS, USX and still quite a bit of edge picking). The latter describes where I’m at right now, but I battle a tendency toward excess tension when playing faster passages.

Working through some of the exercises/tests (knocking on table, scribble, and scratch-off motions) my speed is on the more moderate side relative to what TG was doing in the example videos, and it leads me to a question:

Could some of this be due to handedness, and are the knocking/scribbling/scratch-off motions something worth practicing? I’ve been working on my tremolo in recent weeks (never a strong point) and have gotten it to (sixteenth notes at) ~160 BPM, which still feels on the more “moderate” side of things (and doesn’t quite feel as effortless as it seems it should).

Curious if any other lefty-plays-righty players have thoughts or experience to share. Cheers!

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#2

I don’t think the pure flexion/extension wrist knocking motion translates perfectly to guitar playing from most setups I’ve seen-- I think Troy’s posted a video somewhere with extreme supination and got some ridiculous speed, but I don’t know about how conducive that setup is to string muting, hybrid picking, or dynamics of attack-- I’ve personally never tried it. There is the pronatedish, often trailing edge USX form that uses 11 o’clock motion (I think Shawn Lane, Preston Black, maybe Eric Johnson use it) you can experiment with. @Tom_Gilroy has written about it on here. I think the scribble test does translate to RH speed for most common wrist picking setups.

I was able to increase my tremolo from 11.5ish notes/second (16ths at 172) to 14ish (with a bit of coffee) with forearm motion, and 15ish with supinated, 1 or 2 o’clock wrist motion (James Hetfield-style)-- now, I play much less and don’t play metal so I haven’t kept that ability and can’t go quite as fast. I can do the scribbling test much faster with my right hand than my left hand so with all that in mind I’m inclined to think that you can build speed by just practicing the movement and your nervous system will become more efficient at firing those antagonistic muscle pairs over time.

If I recall correctly, Shawn Lane and Michael Angelo Batio are both naturally lefty and play guitar “righty” and both can pick fast enough for about anything so I don’t think natural handedness is going to necessarily be a hurdle.

#3

Thanks for those thoughts!

Like you, using elbow motion and DSX I can get just a touch more tremolo speed, but I’m a bit reluctant to make that my primary motion as it doesn’t really seem as compatible with many other techniques that are important to me.

I can scribble with my left hand much, much faster (and more relaxed) than my right, probably just due to writing with my left hand my whole life.

Daily tremolo practice for about a month does seem to show some gains—even if raw speed gains are slight, effortlessness/endurance gains seem perceptible.

I feel like what I’m settling on has a fair degree of forearm rotation (though this mechanic is also faster in my left hand for the time being).

Flipping the guitar over and trying tremolo “lefty” and it’s instantly faster than what I can do with my right hand, which is slightly annoying

#4

I’m also a lefty playing righty with all the same issues. It’s even worse because I played bass and finger style acoustic guitar for my formative years, and only started using a pick much later. My fingering hand has always been much more developed than my picking hand. I happened to watch a Rock Beato video with Kiko Loureiro recently and he mentioned he was lefty playing righty. It clearly doesn’t hold him back, but he talked about how he has to do a lot of dedicated picking practice to maintain his technique.

For me the answer has been elbow motion with downstroke escape. I just really can’t get any wrist motion happening. I can do it if I support my wrist with my left hand, but the second I take that away my wrist locks up again. I know Troy and the CtC team say to use what is natural and not to waste time focusing on an unnatural motion. The problem is that I’m trying to play gypsy jazz guitar which requires a “wrist motion upstroke escape with rest strokes” style.

I don’t really have any answers, just sharing my experience. You might play around with elbow motion more and see if you can figure out how to make it work. I haven’t analyzed exactly what I’m doing, but on electric guitar I’m able to change strings after upstrokes and downstrokes at decent speed.

#5

My schedule looks to be a bit lighter than usual over the next couple of months, so I’m using this time as kind of a “sabbatical” to try and improve/expand my technique.

It had been many years since I worked on technique in any kind of dedicated/focused fashion, but it’s been pretty eye-opening to work in this way for a bit.

In the first few weeks, one thing I’m already kind of figuring out is that some of my “right hand” issues are actually what I’d call “left-hand balance” issues.

I apply more left-hand pressure than is needed generally, and that pressure is also imbalanced (with fingers 1-2 typically seeing more pressure than finger 3 and especially 4).

The way this interacts with right-hand tension is a bit convoluted to unwind and I’m still understanding it, but I notice that as my left-hand 3-4 fingers are pressed into greater service, I feel tension creep into both hands.

Tremolo picking work on a single note is starting to pay some dividends, as my right hand is now faster than my left when flipping the guitar over–for the first time ever. But in addition, I’m working on addressing the above-mentioned left-hand balance problems. Some of my right-hand tension is just beginning to iron itself out as a result.

Between that and tremolo picking, I’ve got two things to focus on that have been career-long weaknesses for me. I’m excited to see where it leads.

#6

Hey there, i learned as right handed, And i always had issues developing speed . today i cant play fast , i’ve noticed my picking hand is really dumb doing wrist and forearm motions. In fact my tremolo technique is mostly elbow and little wrist with usx , troy helped me with all the movements awareness although i got some improvement, no way i can say i reached reasonable speed, so i switched to left handed. And happened the same as you., all the wrist and forearm motions are there with no study, i can pick way faster than right handed, but i dont know if i can say its just that, see i’ve always wanted to play more fast strumming and rythm based genres and altough i have those movements as lefty i’m still struggling with strumming, also i noticed that my lefty picking hand its faster but i feel it weaker than my. Right picking hand, for strumming and picking so i’m not sure if i need to play harder until i can play with the same dynamics as right handed. Also its weird with strumming, i strum 16th at 120-140 on the top strings power chords mostly(as righty) but when i try. Funk chords or something in the bottom strings i really suck at it. One thing im sure at least in my case is that as a previous reply said i need more study to mantain my right picking hand technique , and i’m not really sure if the start fast approach works if you are lefty playing righty in my case havent seen results, in fact everything i’ve learned well was using the increase tempo gradually, specially on my fretting hand. I’ve had better results with the “start fast” on my lefty picking hand. Not fretting.
Anyway is a headache switching after so many years but i think it has potencial, do you all lefties playing righties have troubles with strumming? I’d really hope @troy realease the cory wong interview but i guess thats not gonna happen, troy is a genious and great person and teacher but it seems his goal is focused on shredding , anyway its amazing what he has acomplished.

#7

Pretty interesting development over the last two days.

I sat down and decided to just play over some changes while really paying attention to my right hand, and I noticed that a lot of the language I was playing (over altered dominants in particular) felt pretty awkward.

Trying a downstroke escape motion as an experiment, everything suddenly felt way more natural and better (despite not being what I’m most used to at the moment).

I also noticed that when experimenting with downstroke escape, I instantly had more control over accents/dynamics on upstrokes, and had equal facility accenting either upstrokes or downstrokes.

A touch of wrist tension/awkwardness that I’ve always carried was gone. DSX felt kind of instantly familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

During my university studies several years ago a few well-meaning teachers suggested changes to my technique. The kind of “ancestral” DSX familiarity leads me to believe that I may originally have been a DSX player and had this “fixed,” and playing hasn’t felt natural since.

I was actually kind of resistant to this possibility at first, but I’ve decided to embrace it and see how natural this DSX motion can be for me. Tremolo is instantly faster, playing lines feels like it could soon be way more comfortable… even rhythm playing is feeling encouraging. Time feels better, dynamic accents show lots of possibility…

Overall the ingrained USX motion still feels more “familiar,” but the DSX feels more “right.” I’m really looking forward to seeing where this leads

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