Question regarding 'leftism'

I am fairly new to drumming, but I have been playing guitar for almost 40 years. I am right-handed, and yet my left hand does most of the work on a right-handed guitar. Somehow my "weak" hand is able to do complex chord changes, and rip out blazing solos---because that is how I learned to play! One of the best drummers I know (also my teacher) can't even write his name with his right hand, but plays a right-handed kit because that is how HE learned to play! If you play left handed it's because that's how YOU learned to play!
 
I am very left handed and right footed, so I play a right-handed kit open handed. I tried setting up left handed, but it seemed awkward to me. When I was young, before I was a drummer, I always kicked a ball with my right foot. So I set up like this:
 

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VitalTransformation said:
Hi general forum!



So my question is simply: Does turning around your instrument really make it easier to learn when you're a kid and the whole thing is alien to you anyway? With completely untrained limbs and fingers, wouldn't you be able to learn stuff just as good on a right-hand drum set or guitar?

I'm pretty much left handed in everything. I've learned a lot of right handed things on the drum set, just to make me a better player, but not to play right handed per say. I think for a left handed beginner, who has never played drums before, they would still favor a left handed kit. I say that because in everything else in life they've established their left hand as their primary hand. The most important, or the one they use the most. So it seems to me that would be the hand they would use the most on the drum set, which would be the hand that they ride with and lead on fills. I really don't know how long I played left handed before my mother found me a teacher, I don't think more than a yr. I was around 10 or 11 yrs. old. The teacher was left handed who played right handed and wanted me to play right handed. I tried it for a little while and gave up. I think I had 2 lessons for him. Those were all the lessons I've had. That was in 1970.
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Full lefty here, on everything except the drums. Right kicker.

I had to learn overhand righty for convenience (school teacher would not let me shift to lefty setup), and now I would never trade my good left hand playing with full control on the snare for the weaker one. That one is for ride and hh.

I did tend to start fills with my left hand, but got corrected quickly enough to avoid turning into a habit.

But having to work twice as hard in the beginning contributed to the way I play today, so I would not have it any other way.
 
I'm left handed and learned how to play on a right handed kit but with the ride cymbal on the left side. I am not inherently coordinated and had to work very hard to learn to play drums (started when I was 10, I'm 46 now).

I am very glad that I didn't learn on a lefty kit because now I'm often either playing at jams where the house kit is set up right handed or I'm playing with my band on a kit in a practice space that is set up right handed. If I can, I'll move the ride to the left side; if I can't I just ride on the crash cymbal. Not ideal, but overall it has worked for me.

Sometimes wish I learned to lead with both hands, but I'll fully admit that would have taken me a lot of work at the expense of learning other things, like developing my time keeping. I agree with those that say it's really good to learn how to lead with both hands, but I would say the most important thing to learn as a drummer is how to consistently keep steady time. Even now there are a lot of drummers at jams or in other bands that have better chops than me, but I get asked to be in the house band at jams and play in bands over those guys because people tell me I keep steady time and that's ultimately what they want from a drummer.
 
pfastfoot said:
Sometimes wish I learned to lead with both hands, but I'll fully admit that would have taken me a lot of work at the expense of learning other things, like developing my time keeping. I agree with those that say it's really good to learn how to lead with both hands, but I would say the most important thing to learn as a drummer is how to consistently keep steady time. Even now there are a lot of drummers at jams or in other bands that have better chops than me, but I get asked to be in the house band at jams and play in bands over those guys because people tell me I keep steady time and that's ultimately what they want from a drummer.
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^^This.

And I totally believe that you must learn how to be comfortable behind whatever kit you have, however way you want to play it. That's the beauty of the drum set: you can set it up however you want.

The great Alan Dawson said in an old interview that he encounters drummers with incredible chops all the time. But have them hit two drums at once in a simple direct manner and no one can seem to do that. Getting back to basics and learning how to really lay down the time is still the drummer's job in my book.
 
While in college I took an archery course just for yucks. Because my left eye was my better eye, and since I had never shot a bow, I learned the whole process left handed and did very well. Was also watching golf on TV yesterday and they spot lighted a golfer whose kids wanted to learn, they were younger than ten, did everything right handed but dad was left handed and they learned to play left handed and were proficient to say the least.
 
I have had this discussion several times with the bassist in my band (who is a lefty). What I have decided is that the dominant hand is just naturally better at keeping rhythm. It would seem that as a guitarist you would want you fretting hand to be your dominant given the needed dexterity, but people naturally keep rhythm better with that hand, so we have adapted the instrument so the weak hand actually does the more dexterous work. Its the same with the drums, while the snare hand would seem to be more important, its actually the high-hat, or ride hand that is more important in time keeping. This is why even as kids learning the instruments we tend to play the instruments when our dominant hands in the typical positions.
 
I am a complete lefty at everything I do and I started playing drums at 37 well after my left hand and left foot had become dominate at everything I do. Maybe if I had started as a child I might have been able to learn as a righty.

I immediately setup my kit as a lefty and even when I took lessons I switched the kit around when I got there and the teacher had no problem with it. It is definitely much more comfortable for me and I just play at home so no problem with having to sit in on a righty kit.
 
Here is what I believe:
When we start life there is no weak hand. We train one hand to be weaker than the other. Or should I say we favor one hand over the other. We do more things, more often, with our favored hand. Therefore it develops differently.
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There is evidence that handedness is genetic. We don't know which genes, or how many, impact handedness. But there is evidence that preference for the right hand has been present for half a million years. Even some primates seem to demonstrate a preference for the right hand.

There's still a lot we don't know, but it seems to be about more than just how we're taught.
 
Weird that we aren't wired to be symmetrical, eh? We have body symmetry, but not use-symmetry.

What evolutionary gain caused handed-ness to prevail in the grand scheme of human development...

Or animal development, for that matter. My cat is right handed/pawed.
 
It may be in our brains. We only use a small percentage of what our brains are capable of. If we could use our brains to a fuller extent, we might not favor one hand over the other. We could have great motor skills with all parts of our bodies. When I was around 5 yr. old my older teenage brother had an electric guitar (right handed of coarse). When I held it I held like a lefty. It's just natural for me. Even though the only exposure to the guitar was through my right handed bro. Everything about me has been lefty all my life. I weld right handed some now days to make certain jobs easier, but it sure doesn't look like my lefty welding. Same with drumming, but the drumming is getting better.
 
I'm left-handed with writing and using a fork. But righty with everything else.

It is FAR more natural for me to lead with my left hand in drumming. I can just feel it when I play. The body wants to do what it wants to do. And unless you buy a double-bass pedal, right or left doesn't matter setting up anyway, hardware-wise.

But I'm also blind in my left eye and I cannot deal with the illusion of my left hand's stick looking as though it will whack me in the face all day playing quarter-notes lefty. Lack of depth-perception sucks.

So I set up righty and deal with it.

It actually really bothers me to watch lefty drummers like Rod Morgenstein. Although it was really cool to watch him and Van Romaine playing mirrored drums at the same time that one DD/SMB tour.
 
I'm just bumping my thread just to thank you guys for all the incredible replies! I started this thread just before taking a little break from internet forums and just forgot it existed.

And Matt: I put "leftism" in the title as a bit of humor just to attract some interest to my thread, not to implicate any sort of disease or disability... Notice in my OP I declared both my wife and myself as suffering from "rightism"..!

But reading through this thread right now is a real learning experience!
 
Can I still get in on this? Lol...

Right-eye dominant "lefty"..

Never had lessons when I started, but as a grade school (forced into it) trumpet player wanna-be drummer, my only exposure to a real live drum get was at school...

At 14 I bought a bass drum, mounted tom, and snare drum off a classmate.
Took them home and set them up... Bass drum on the right, hi hat on the left. Didn't have a ride or crash cymbal. Put a record on and started banging away.
LEFT hand on hat...RIGHT hand on snare... And off I went.

Six months later...got a Rogers five piece with two 18" Zildjian crash rides...
I could ride on the left or ride on the right lol.....

But...BUT! I never developed my left hand to do more than straight 16th notes, no spang-a-lang, no doubles, no ghost notes, etc. Any "finesse" work (to this day) mostly has to be done by the right hand... (Get a teacher when you are young kids!). This slso means that I have learned to cross over by necessity if I want to play any decent pattern on the hats.

Today I am in the process of developing my left hand. And that obviously, wiuld have been much easier at 14 than it is today at 55! Lol
 
I'm a righty and I'm 40.

The last couple of months I've been playing not only open handed a lot, but full lefty, too.

The main point was to get my left hand more in shape, especially match grip as I'm mostly a trad player. The jazz ride was the hardest. French grip on the left still needs some work. Playing bassdrum with the left, being used to playing melodies on the hats, really doesn't make much of a difference to me, though. It really doesn't.

I guess some find this to be a silly thing to practice, but it really is just a bit of independence work that has a tremendous effect on bringing the weak side up at the same level. Seems to work well for me.

The simplest and most fun way, for me anyway, is to do something about that 4 to 1 ratio. Just makes me feel more balanced and confident about playing in general. Combined with mostly groove based improvisatonl pracice these days I definetly feel it helps. A lot.
 
Lefty here that grew up in a musical family, so all right handed instruments. Playing righty makes social interaction and gear sharing a lot easier.

Beggars can't be choosers.
 
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