Hey Lefty Drummers

Whenever I watch Billy Cobham grooving, I think to myself "Man I wish I had a dominant left hand!"
 
I can play right or left handed EXCEPT the kick drum. I absolutely can not play the kick drum with my right foot. Strictly left handed I can play virtually anything I want. Right handed ( open) still keeping the left foot on the pedal I'm a 7/10 skill wise. If I try to play all right handed it's like I just started playing last week. Just show up with a bunch of lefty drummers and outnumber the bastards!
 
I'm right handed. But for a long time I think I might have been left-footed. Or perhaps I developed a dominate left foot from driving down the road and playing my dashboard "kit" bass drum with my left foot as the right foot was occupied by the accelerator (are the pedals the same in England?). I finally got over it but I had pondered on more than one occasion of switching my foot gear around to accommodate this dominance.

And Jimmy M. an old drumster from the neighborhood played his drums centered and fed off of the set rather ambidextrously. Which is, as I understand it, how Billy Cobham approaches the set. Ambidextrously.

One can develop that independent left hand and it does come in very handy on the hi-hat while you're rolling around with your right. I used to work on that stuff but over time it just seemed to take a back seat to what was natural to me, save the "dominance" of that persistent left foot.
 
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Seriously, though, being left-handed can be a serious pain, especially for an instrument like the drums where the pieces need to be configured in a certain way.

Save for electric guitars/basses. McCartney played a lefty Hofner bass and he was fortunate to have one. I believe he even stated that Hofners actually made a left handed bass. Fender didn't for years.

Lefty electric guitars and basses had to be flipped over and mirrored. The strings and nuts repositioned. The tuning gears mechanically reversed, the control knobs mechanically reversed, the pickups reversed wired...

Many guitarists/bassist simply flipped their instruments over and reset the strings leaving the controls etc... in the right handed configuration. Hendrix was one.

Dick Dale just flipped is guitar over and learned playing upside down and backwards, so did Jimmy Haslip on bass (The yellow jackets). Their guitars/basses look normal now but the strings are still upside down from the original configuration.

And lefty instruments used to cost considerably more because all the gears and wires, pickup windings, and potentiometers had to be reversed mechanically. Way back in the 60s it was usually a special order from the factory.

Nowadays that's not the case. Left handed electric guitars & basses are readily available and I believe they even cost the same.

What about brass instruments? Trombones can be reversed easily enough. But Clarinets? Saxes? I'm not sure but after looking around it doesn't appear so. Trumpets, not sure(but workable). The viol family of instruments can be switchdc easily enough; acoustic guitars, same-same.

Drums? Reconfigured easily enough. More so than just about any other instrument. I wonder how many drummers were lefties and couldn't play other instruments that were right hand dominant.

I have heard lefties playing right handed guitars (out of misguided necessity) and truthfully I observe them and jam with them etc... and they are still a bit lacking in the groove. Enough that I wonder why they just didn't flip the instrument over and work from a much more comfortable perspective during those formative years of learning.
 
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I have heard lefties playing right handed guitars (out of misguided necessity) and truthfully I observe them and jam with them etc... and they are still a bit lacking in the groove. Enough that I wonder why they just didn't flip the instrument over and work from a much more comfortable perspective during those formative years of learning.

Many Lefty-play-righty guitarists are broken. And you're right. The broken ones need to switch back. But when it works, it really works. There was a list somewhere a while back, I'll see if I can dig it up. Here's a thread with a partial list.
 
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