Lefty drummer problems

Ikebongo

Member
Watching instagram videos of all righty drummers thinking everyhtkng looks backwards.

Do any lefty drummers play R hand lead sometimes bc they got so used to seeing everyone play with their right hand?
 
I am very "lefty," and I play open handed. My ride is on the left near the hats. I play the bass drum with my right foot. I do not lead with my right very often. Peace and goodwill.
 

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Naturally left handed in everything other than writing, learnt to play left handed and swapped at school because I was sick of swapping everything over.......23 years on I'm still right handed.

Technique wise it's always good to be able to lead with both hands but I feel your pain!
 
If you can lead with the left hand and the right foot, and play open handed ,on a right handed set up, then you have the holy grail of possibility imo!

If I had no previous experience or habits to break, this is how I would want to learn to play.

Many discussions about piano being as it is and every newbie has to learn that way regardless of whether left or right handed...drums could/should be the same?


Edit: Of course right hand/left foot ,open handed on a LEFT hand set up is perfectly acceptable - No leftism here!! :)
 
Im left-handed but play a traditional right-handed set up. For some reason, that has always made sense to me.

I'm also "right-footed". It makes sense to put that on the bass drum. Since I have more power with my left (swinging a hammer for instance) that would logically go on the snare; I also have more finesse with my right hand, so it seems logical that would be my lead hand. That's how I arrived at my set up

I've tried a traditional left-handed set up and just couldn't do it...
 
Watching instagram videos of all righty drummers thinking everyhtkng looks backwards.

Do any lefty drummers play R hand lead sometimes bc they got so used to seeing everyone play with their right hand?

No. I play lefty because that’s how I’m wired. What I see and what is me are two different things.

I do partially regret that my parents and mentors just didn’t approach the drumset like a piano, and I just conformed to right-handedness when I was four - my life sitting in would be so much easier these days. OTOH - being left-handed just made me work that much harder so I’d just take the gig instead ;)
 
I'm a lefty and never had a problem transposing what I saw into my southpaw setup. Most of it's aural, anyway - I'm listening while I'm watching, and making those mental connections to the appropriate limbs as I do. That is, I'm not thinking of it so much as 'Right hand - left hand - right foot' as I am 'Hi-hat - snare - bass drum'.
 
I have only ever played set the right-handed way, even though I’m strongly left-handed and left-footed. I consciously forced myself to play EVERYTHING on snare right-hand-lead only in college. I still play things right-hand-lead a little better on snare, even though my regular practice is pretty balanced.

I can’t imagine letting a student play drums left-hand-setup. They can play open-handed if they want, but no way would I set them up for failure by letting them play with a lefty setup.
 
I am curious, failure how? I am a lefty playing a lefty setup, this is how I've always played and it's never been a problem in any aspect...

Failure in teaching, for one. It’s a lot harder to demonstrate something on a kit to someone playing the opposite setup.

Also, failure in sitting in on someone else’s kit. Granted, kit setups vary a lot, but most people have 1 or 2 up and 1 down, and that’s 3 pieces you have to move around.
 
I can’t imagine letting a student play drums left-hand-setup. They can play open-handed if they want, but no way would I set them up for failure by letting them play with a lefty setup.

This is always a hot topic of discussion and many people have asked me why I play completely left-handed. Sometimes I wish I was forced to just learn how to play right-handed, but now looking back on it, who knows if I would've kept at it had that been done?

If you have a child that naturally leans one way or the other, I don't think forcing them to do the "right" way is the right thing to do. Like I said, if people are wired a certain way, your job as a teacher is to exploit that way and make the student enjoy what he's doing and excel at it, no?

Yes, I don't get a chance to sit-in that much, and when I do, it's always a hassle to switch over stuff - but I only flip the snare, floor tom, and hi-hat, I leave the rest of the kit the same and make do. But I've also played a lot of situations where I'm the drummer so sitting in to network hasn't had to happen so much.

Being completely left-handed hasn't hindered me that much. Even in drum corps, I learned rudiments right-handed because IA had to match the line, and that gave me this ambidextrous thing when I was done with that phase of my life. I just think I wouldn't immediately shoot down a student because he plays left-handed and force him to do it the other way. If the student wants to switch, then that's another issue, but I wouldn't just make a judgment call like that because I'm "the teacher".
 
This is always a hot topic of discussion and many people have asked me why I play completely left-handed. Sometimes I wish I was forced to just learn how to play right-handed, but now looking back on it, who knows if I would've kept at it had that been done?

If you have a child that naturally leans one way or the other, I don't think forcing them to do the "right" way is the right thing to do. Like I said, if people are wired a certain way, your job as a teacher is to exploit that way and make the student enjoy what he's doing and excel at it, no?

Yes, I don't get a chance to sit-in that much, and when I do, it's always a hassle to switch over stuff - but I only flip the snare, floor tom, and hi-hat, I leave the rest of the kit the same and make do. But I've also played a lot of situations where I'm the drummer so sitting in to network hasn't had to happen so much.

Being completely left-handed hasn't hindered me that much. Even in drum corps, I learned rudiments right-handed because IA had to match the line, and that gave me this ambidextrous thing when I was done with that phase of my life. I just think I wouldn't immediately shoot down a student because he plays left-handed and force him to do it the other way. If the student wants to switch, then that's another issue, but I wouldn't just make a judgment call like that because I'm "the teacher".

If the student already has decent facility on the kit, I would let them play lefty, but only after cautioning them about the extra hassles of playing lefty. If they are just a beginner, I’d have them play a single-stroke roll in a mirror, and say “see how your left hand is so much higher and moves better? The quickest way to fix that is to play righty. Lefties are lucky in that we get an easy chance to smoothly improve the unevenness between our hands simply by just playing righty.”
 
I have been playing for 22 years, am left handed, and have always played right hand ride crossed over on the hi-hat. I wasn't even aware that you could play your kit "backwards" until I saw it in a Modern Drummer years after I started, and by that time I was used to hitting backbeats with my left hand, as well as playing ghosts and accents with it. I have tried playing open handed, but can only play simple beats and can't get enough power because I'm used to instinctively catching the rim and can't seem to get the angle right with my right hand.

Though even playing cross handed, from the angle I play hi-hat I have no problem with my left hand dancing around the kit to play accents and extra stuff on the cymbals, toms, and cowbell while I keep time on the ride or hi-hat. I've never had a reason to switch to open handed or "all left playing" even though I am left handed, but use my left hand a lot in my playing. That's my 2 cents any way.
 
I'm a lefty in every aspect (writing, sports, whatever) and play a lefty setup - with a twist: I play open handed, so snare with the left hand and hihat and the ride cymbal (also on the right side, above the hats) with the right hand.
It seemed the most natural way for me play to so why fight it?
 
I'm kinda confused. Anything I swing or shoot, I do right handed. Anything else is left handed.

When learning to play drums, I switched the traditional grip, because leftys always do the reverse, right? By the time I got to high school, I couldn't play right handed traditional grip very well, so that knocked me out of the snare line. I always played toms and mallets with a matched grip.

I'm another lefty that plays a right-handed kit. I've played around with switching to left-handed, but can't get my left foot to cooperate. I guess I've played right-footed too long. Right to left fills are really easier for me.

As far as leading with the left, I do that most times and often have to think about how to lead a fill.
 
Watching instagram videos of all righty drummers thinking everyhtkng looks backwards.

Do any lefty drummers play R hand lead sometimes bc they got so used to seeing everyone play with their right hand?

Not peronally from watchin others ,on video or whatev. (Im a left play righty).

But i understand that Carter beauford learned by watching tv, just like u said, so i guess he emulated what he saw, which made ot technically "backwards ". Now, based on Carter's playing , i would NOT see this as a drawback, by any stretch.

Ymmv.


T.
 
I'm a lefty and never had a problem transposing what I saw into my southpaw setup. Most of it's aural, anyway - I'm listening while I'm watching, and making those mental connections to the appropriate limbs as I do. That is, I'm not thinking of it so much as 'Right hand - left hand - right foot' as I am 'Hi-hat - snare - bass drum'.
Thanks, I have trouble hearing it sometimes because I get confused which hand is playing what when things get complicated.
 
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