As you can guess from the blog section, I’m a left-handed guitar player. Cool, right!?

Mmm… not sure. It’s borderline confusing to say, if I think about it, there are plenty of pros and cons.

Here’s the thing: I know more than a few left-handed people who were taught to play guitar right-handed. Honestly, that sounds crazy to me, but maybe it was easier for them to get started.

Fun fact about me:
When I was five, I was already in school (December born kid, early start) and one day, while running and playing during the winter season, I fell and badly broke my left wrist. Since as kinds we still were learning to write our first words, my teacher at that time, instead of leaving me behind, taught me to write with my right hand. Surprisingly, I got pretty good at drawing too despite being left-handed!

Growing up, I realized I had this weird mixed hand dominance. Some things I did better with my left hand, others with my right.

Anyway, during my teenage years, I was completely blown away by a video of Jimi Hendrix. He was playing a reversed Strat, and I thought, “Wait a second… this guy is cool! He’s left-handed like me!” (Okay, I should probably say I’m left-handed like him.)

From that moment, I wanted to do the same so badly. I got my first guitar when I was 14. But guess what? It wasn’t a Stratocaster. Nope. It was a super cheap axe made of a mix of questionable woods with six strings slapped on it.

Now, keep in mind this was 1986. YouTube was not existing yet, and the internet? Yeah, not even close, popular and necessary to what we know today. If you wanted to learn guitar, no chances to watch a YT tutorial, you had to find a teacher or have a friend already playing. But where was I going to find a rock guitar teacher in my small Italian town? At that time? This wasn’t L.A. you know…

Anyway, I was too curious to wait around. I wanted to figure the instrument out myself, how it worked, how it was made, how to play some notes with it, all that stuff. So, like many others back then, I learned my first notes playing by ear, listening to vinyls, destroying them, repeating deadly the easiest parts I could try to play myself, etc

Naturally, I picked up the guitar left-handed, and the first challenging thing was flipping the strings. But hey, I made it work. And if I think back over the years, I’ve come to really enjoy being left-handed.

Anyway, about pros and cons:

Some pros:
– Nobody will play your guitar ever. Period (Yep, unless you meet another lefty).
– People look at you on stage with curiosity.
– You can say you’ve got at least one thing in common with Jimi Hendrix!

Some cons:
– Left-handed guitars are harder to find, and you’re usually stuck with standard models.
– There’s less of a secondhand market.
– Playing with someone else can feel weird, it’s like looking in a mirror. Cool sometimes, but also disorienting.

Another fun fact:
For some reasons, there was a time when playing a reversed guitar like Jimi was pretty trendy. I remember some right-handed players getting crazy to buy lefty guitars just to get that look. That used to drive me nuts! I mean, let me tell you bud, you’re not looking cool at all. Period again.
Also, let me tell you this, a reversed guitar is ridiculously uncomfortable to play unless you’re Jimi Hendrix himself (but if you check his arms positions, I can bet some cents he was not that comfortable as well, even if it became iconic).

But hey, that’s me, and I’m cool with it. I like being left-handed, it’s my nature after all. If I could go back in time and someone suggested me to learn playing right-handed, I’d still say, “No thanks.” It wasn’t really a conscious decision back then; it’s just what felt natural and luckily I do not regret!

Rock on! \m/