Why does conventional playing style give the string manipulation to the left hand?

Question

For the majority of players, the right hand is used for most tasks that require exacting manipulation: writing, throwing, etc.

However, guitar, violin, lute, etc., use the right hand for plucking the strings – often with a pick – and the left hand is required to do the more exacting work of pressing the strings to the neck of the instrument. As a player myself, this feels nothing but natural.

But if you could start from scratch with no preconceived notions, wouldn't it be better to use your right hand to manipulate the strings on the neck? That requires faster and more exacting finger movement then waving a pick over the strings or holding a bow and sliding it back and forth.

Answer 1

Your logic fits and, as some of the commentators have stated, I've pondered about this in the past.

Usually your dominant hand naturally can handle doing a lot more work, like you've stated. In playing instruments, the dominant hand also should be used for doing the "big jobs":

• in drumming, the dominant hand would be hitting the hi-hats. In a normal 4/4 measure, the dominant hand would hit the hi-hats 8 times, whereas the other hand would hit the snare once or twice.
• in tabla, the dominant hand would play the fine tuned dayan. Once again in a normal 4/4 measure, the dominant hand would be playing 6-8 notes, whereas the other hand would play anywhere from 2-4 notes.

This also goes for the guitar. If you're playing rhythm, the dominant hand is doing all of this work, upstrokes, downstrokes, arpeggios, string skipping, etc., whereas the other hand is simply fretting a chord.

Picking/strumming can require big/quick/exact movements. Fingering and fretting gennerally requires smaller, more dexterous movements.

I guess the misconception/myth is that picking/strumming is less work than fretting. I wouldn't say that one is more than the other, it's just different types of work, and generally, the dominant hand is better suited for picking/strumming.

Note: There are some people who are dominant right-handed and play left-handed, and vice versa. In the end, it all comes down to whatever is the most comfortable for you. Nowadays, there is no lack of left-handed guitars available, so if you find it easier and more comfortable to play that way, go for it!

Also, see this page which has some more information in deciding whether to play one way vs. another.

Answer 2

After a few years of practice, bowing becomes harder than fingering. Consider the whole arm, not just the hand, when measuring the difficulty of the subtasks of playing.

Answer 3

I am right handed and play conventionally - right hand picking, left hand fretting - and this does give my dominant hand the complicated, strenuous work.

Fretting chords is relatively easy work, and even when there are aspects of left hand work which are fast or complex, the right hand is usually having to cope with even more complex patterns at the same time.

The genres I play range from blues and classical to heavy metal and rock, and for these the right hand is almost always working harder.

Answer 4

The answer is probably in history. When the first guitar-like instruments were created, things they played were more right-hand-demanding, and only later complexity moved to the left hand, while traditions left unchanged.

I am left-handed, but play 'righty' guitar, and I've always felt it more natural (as of contemporary stuff).

Answer 5

I'm a left handed guy with nearly 30 years of right handed guitar playing/teaching experience. I've always wondered if I should have learned leftie style. When learning it feels strongly that the fretting hand is the business end. But as you progress you learn what makes the difference between an OK player and a great player with individual style is the strumming/picking hand or in most cases the dominant hand. I'm fine with doing this with my right non dominant hand. Perhaps fine could have been easier or better though with my left dominant hand. I did not have this choice with the piano and this did not hold me back though. My honest conclusion is that some people are v left or right handed and have to stick with that. Some are more flexible like me and I should be grateful for this.

I once knew an ambidextrous guitarist who busked with two guitars I'd like to ask him some questions now now about all this.

Answer 6

I can see that there are already many answers to this question at this point, but I think I can add some more information on this matter.

D Mac wrote:

Why does conventional playing style give the string manipulation to the left hand?

The left hand prepares the note, the right hand plays the note. Thus you are in control of playing with the right hand which feels natural for a right-handed person. I will elaborate below.

D Mac wrote:

But if you could start from scratch with no preconceived notions, wouldn't it be better to use your right hand to manipulate the strings on the neck? That requires faster and more exacting finger movement then waving a pick over the strings or holding a bow and sliding it back and forth.

I am a violin teacher and I have taught many students to play the violin from scratch. Some of those were left-handed playing on a right-handed violin. So I have some experience on that particular aspect. Now there are many factors playing a role, like how strong the motivation is, how much the student practice, some has a very good flair for playing the violin and so on. But in general it is harder for the left-handed student to play on a normal right-handed violin.

There is a good reason for that. Playing an instrument is a matter of creating and/or manipulating sound. And the sound appears at that exact moment when you move the bow. This means that you take control of the sound with the bow. This control feels natural to do with the right hand if you are right handed. There are countless ways of manipulating the sound with the bow; bowing technique is a huge subject on violin playing.

The left hand does have some role in the quality of the sound, like you do need to place the left hand fingers correctly in order to play in tune but the sound won't appear until you move the bow. You can also vibrate with the left hand and thereby have a left hand influence on the quality of the sound, but the main control of the sound is in the right hand with the bow.

An advanced player who has learned a great deal of bowing technique can of course do a lot more than a beginner, but even a beginner can manipulate the sound with the bow.

Answer 7

It's an active/passive/control hand thing. The right hand determines the loudness of the tone and its character and exact timing, both with plucked as well as bowed string instruments.

A right-handed person will use a hammer in the right hand. When you are taking a look at what a blacksmith does with his left and his right hand, the left hand requires a lot more dexterity for managing the work piece between hits. What the right hand provides is controlled power and the driving force.

Answer 8

I am left handed and have always played guitar right handed. It felt right to me that way. Baseball, golf, shooting rifle, eating, writing - i am very left handed and can't function trying to do it right handed. Like I say, guitar feels natural right handed to me and I developed my fingering very quickly. I don't believe that the right hand is doing any work that is harder. The left hand needs very dexterous flexablility and coordination.

To answer the question, I believe that the right hand may do well over the sound box or pickups because it has better spatial coordination. The right arm is less supported than the left, which always is supportted on the neck. The right hand sometimes needs to be able to function without the arm resting on the guitar. Primary handedness would suit the act of your arm in free space and coming down to strum the strings accurately.

I still have issues with my right hand being confused about which string I am picking vs which finger/string is being fretted. However, I would take better and quicker left hand development over perfect picking/strumming anyday. I think you enjoy learning the guitar more and stick with it when your left hand develops faster.

Answer 9

As a multi-instrumentalist that plays guitar and bass both ways, it seems to me that I have more control of the instrument with my preferred hand strumming/plucking, but my bends and string articulation are better with my preferred hand fretting. Sweep picking, string skipping, finger picking, etc, are easier and clearer with the preferred hand on the plucking end, but things like bends, vibratos, and other fret-hand articulations are more effective with the dominant hand. When I'm strumming with my off-hand, I find myself requiring more focus on the strumming and picking. Naturally, once I've gotten either down to muscle memory, it doesn't matter much. If you asked me to just sit and play something off the top of my head, it would depend on how i intended to play to choose whether my preferred hand fretted or picked/strummed.

Answer 10

I just had this question to my key board instructor, who happens to be a good guitar player too. He was baffled. He took his guitar and put it reverse as in picking the strings with left hand and notes with right hand. He is a right handed person and never held guitar like that. He just could not comprehend how to use the guitar in the other way. My theory, or explanation was that when we pick the strings of guitar with right hand, they are the originators of a sound. So basic sound is generated by the picking of the string. This is the most important aspect of the guitar playing. The left hand though it looks like doing majority of work, or the real dextrous work of creating different notes, or chords; those are still the derived sounds, or manipulated sounds governed by the stings vibration done by the right hand side. So the controlling of the string vibration is better handled by the right hand than the left hand. Again, this is my hypothesis. Need to dig in more.

Answer 11

It may be a completely religious war as to which hand is doing the most work, the fretting or strumming/picking hand.

Keeping Register with the strumming hand is much simpler than for the fretting hand. I play bass. My fretting hand is moving in two dimension - between the strings and up and down the fretboard. My picking hand only has to choose the correct string. My fretting hand also has to deal with extreme changes (more than a guitar) in the distance between frets. The distance between the 1st and 3rd frets is dramatically larger than the distance between 13 and 15. Thus playing an octave is a different stretch from my fret hand between E1 and D3 then from E13 and D15... but it's the exact same motion for my picking hand. As I pull-off and hammer-on, my left hand makes 2 or possibly 3 movements for each movement of my strum hand. You can play the same note in a variety of positions on the fretboard... which one I choose is driven more by where my fret hand was on the note before than where my strum hand was. IOW, the less time I have to change notes, the closer I want them to be on the fretboard - making the choice is done by the fret hand, the picking hand only has to follow and find the matching string. The fretting hand has a long list of techniques, hammering on, pulling of, bending, sliding, vibrato, harmonics, etc are all fret hand. There aren't nearly as many for the picking hand. All four fingers and possibly 5 have a precise place to go.

In another answer someone referred to a rhythm guitar pattern where you make a chord shape with the fret hand once per measure but strum 4 times. As a person who has struggled to play guitar, I cannot keep the same shape as I shift up and down the fretboard, but I can strum 4 times a measure with ease.

But lead guitar is not that simplistic. Do a splitscreen on an Eddie Van Halen solo. His picking hand is playing the same string over and over while the fretting had is furiously HOPO'ing.

Answer 12

"the right hand is used for most tasks that require exacting manipulation: writing, throwing, etc."

Are these really tasks that require exacting manipulation? I would not say so, they require exacting action. Exacting manipulation would rather be stuff like holding some object in place while working on it with some tool you hold in the other hand, or aiming with a bow at some target while the other hand draws the string, or fixing food on your plate with a fork while the other hand cuts it with a knife.

Or fingering chords on a guitar while the other hand strums or picks the strings. All of these are more usually done with the "weak" hand: none of this has much meaning in itself, but is necessary to allow the "strong" hand to accomplish the actual tasks.

Though these "manipulations" do require exaction and considerable force, it's of a different kind. It's rather a constant strong "holding" force with small and subtle modifications, such as turning an object, aiming the bow or changing fingerings or doing vibrato, while the strong hand rather applies force momentarily to directly effect something.

I am left-handed and also play guitar and cello lefthanded, and it feels the only correct way to me – however this is definitely for the main out of habit, I doubt I would play too much differently if I had always practised right-handedly. Otherwise there couldn't be so many good left-handed guitarists and string players who actually play right-handed.

Answer 13

If you consider harp or piano, both hands are work to both select pitches and rhythmically "strike" notes. Both of those instruments are fixed pitch with one string per pitch.

Moving to guitar and violin the first thing to point out is they aren't fixed pitch. You can stop the strings along the neck. That's a new job to do with one of the hands.

Let's not talk about right/left hand, but dominant hand instead.

Both hand do have some aspect of selecting pitch. One hand "strikes" one of several strings. The other hand selects strings and neck positions.

Both hands have rhythmic aspects. The hand "striking" the strings obviously needs to do that in rhythm. The other hand working the neck also needs to make changes in rhythm.

Excluding techniques like hammers on guitar or pizzicato with the fingers on the neck of the violin the neck hand is not "striking" the notes. By "strike" I mean setting the string to vibrate.

So, the specific role of "striking" the notes is normally given to the dominant hand. That seems to be the unique role of the dominant hand.

Rather than concluding this is some kind of backward prioritization of the work, it probably makes more sense to recognize rhythmically striking the notes is fundamentally more important than fingering pitches. I really don't see a probably with taking that further and saying rhythm is more fundamentally important than pitch.

Why does conventional playing style give the string manipulation to the left hand?

Because the subordinate role of fingering pitch on the neck is given to the non-dominant hand.

Answer 14

A right handed guitarist's answer: If I didn't pluck the notes (right hand) and only used hammer-on's and pull-offs (left hand) I would be allot faster. The slow part that needs more speed work is the picking hand. This is because (since I am right handed) the left hand notes are played by four different fingers, but the right hand notes are played by one pick. Since I alternate my picking this is a 2:1 ratio favoring the left hand.

I have a friend who is left handed and plays right handed, and though I have not heard him play he claims his hammer-ons and pull-offs are amazing.

Answer 15

When you first learn to play a song then fretting can seem more complicated than the strumming but after you have learned to play the song without error then you focus on making the song sound good by making your playing expressive which is largely driven by the strumming hand (think of the difference between hearing a midi player play a song vs a real musician).

Answer 16

You can think of making music in two dimensions: sound production (pitch) and the nuance of the sounds (phrasing). The first is something of a blunt instrument - you either hit the desired pitch or you don't. The second is the fine detail that makes the sound musical... and that's something that requires more control.

With some instruments, like piano or harp, one hand does both. But if you have a choice, the hand that does the nuance part will be your dominant hand, because that is capable of finer control.

Answer 17

"For the majority of players, the right hand is used for most tasks that require exacting manipulation: writing, throwing, etc."

What defines "exacting manipulation"? This is ambiguous.

"However, guitar, violin, lute, etc., use the right hand for plucking the strings – often with a pick – and the left hand is required to do the more exacting work of pressing the strings to the neck of the instrument. As a player myself, this feels nothing but natural."

This is simply not true. You are assuming an answer here and looking for us to support your assumption. There is nothing benign about the right hand task. It is extremely "exacting" for violin and guitar. First of all the guitar is typically fretted and exactness is not required to get the correct note. Even though it is better to fret a note close to the fret to avoid buzzing it is not a requirement to get the correct pitch. The right hand on classical guitar is where all the expression comes from and this requires extraordinary attention to minute details on pressure and angle of attack for three fingers and a thumb. In fact a good number of classical guitar pieces do not involve a lot of left hand movement but rather holding down a chord and using the right hand to play fast arpeggios. You seem to have invented a special box to put guitar playing in to somehow disparage the right hand to make your point. Your narrative is false. I can say the same for the violin as I have played both violin and classical bass, both bowed. Again, the left hand job is easy. The right hand takes more effort for many players to get control over tone and volume. Have you ever heard a beginner violin player? Forget the left hand fingering, just bow open strings. It can sound like a cat being run over by a slowly moving bicycle. Absolutely horrible. The attacking hand is where the expression is, the control of tone and volume. This is the harder job on any instrument.

"But if you could start from scratch with no preconceived notions, wouldn't it be better to use your right hand to manipulate the strings on the neck? That requires faster and more exacting finger movement then waving a pick over the strings or holding a bow and sliding it back and forth."

No, it wouldn't. You don't just slide the bow back and forth. This takes years of training to get right. However I might suggest trying to play both traditional and reverse as a beginner and seeing how the two feel. Then pick what feels good. I suspect that to a true beginner they both feel awkward.

Answer 18

In short, The answer is that most of the hard/precise/technical work is done by the right/dominant hand.

That is, the left hand is the “show-y” one, and the one whose motions are most obvious to the viewer. And certainly what the left hand does is important (for example, it is primarily responsible for intonation).

And all of this contributes to the common misunderstanding that the left hand is “doing the majority of the work”.

But all the other tasks responsible for the production of the notes (and the tasks requiring the most precision, agility, subtlety and skill) are the responsibility of the right hand; that is, rhythm, articulation, timbre/voice/volume/balance etc.

One way to think of this is to notice that in almost all cases, for each note played in a melody the right hand typically has to make several more motions for each motion made by the left hand.

There are some exceptions here. For example, in the case of pull off/on, trills, etc. But these are the exception. On the other hand, for example in arpeggiation, it is possible to play long passages where the the position of the left hand does’t move at all.

All of this is true in the case of either flat-picking, finger-picking, or, for other instruments, bowing.

(In the case where the player is simply casually strumming the guitar, it might be true that the left hand is “busier” than the right hand, but I think we could all agree that this is not really the instrument in a serious sense.)

Answer 19

Our dominant hand is the one we DO things with. Hit a drum, pluck a string... LH may do intricate stuff on the fretboard, but that's the secondary function, the modifying function. The RH PLAYS the instrument.

Answer 20

But if you could start from scratch with no preconceived notions, wouldn't it be better to use your right hand to manipulate the strings on the neck? That requires faster and more exacting finger movement then waving a pick over the strings or holding a bow and sliding it back and forth.

When I started playing as a teen, I had much the same thought, and armed with an album of Jimi at Monterey Pop and a right-handed Harmony guitar, I tried it both ways, left-handed and right-handed. Yes, I had grown up right-handed, but I had never played an instrument at that time.

The major thing was that, when placed in my lap the right-handed way, the instrument felt natural. When placed left-handed, it felt wroSpecifically, my left wrist wanted to point out and the right wanted to point in. I'm sure I could teach myself, but it wasn't immediately natural.

I can rationalize and say that since the picking/bowing is the part that is the most time-dependent, it is right to do it with the most dexterous hand, and that might be true for some, but no, for me it's the comfort for holding it.

(I've never tried bowing lefty; left-handed violins are even rarer than left-handed guitars, since you'd have to rearrange the orchestra to allow for them. I expect that bowing with my left hand would be a nightmare. It took weeks before my right-handed bowing wasn't a nightmare.)