List of musicians who play left handed

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Revisions and sourced additions are welcome.

This is a list of musicians who play guitar, bass or drums left-handed. This does not include people who play right-handed, despite being left-handed.

1 Guitarists
2 Bass guitarists
3 Drummers
4 Violinists
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links

[edit] Guitarists

Left-handed people play guitar or electric bass in one of three ways: (1) play a right-handed guitar right-handed, (2) play a true left-handed instrument (or a right-handed instrument that has been altered to play left-handed, i.e. with the bass strings on top), or (3) turn a right-handed guitar upside down, pick with the left hand, but leave the strings as they were – which makes them reversed from the normal order for a left-handed player. Any style of picking with the left hand (flatpicking or fingerstyle guitar) is considered playing left-handed.

[edit] Left-handed with strings correct

Guitarists in this category pick with their left hand and have the strings in the correct order for a left-handed player (i.e. the low string on the top). They either have true left-handed guitars or have right-handed guitars altered so the strings are correct for a left-handed player. Some guitarists in this category (e.g. Paul McCartney) play both genuine left-handed instruments and right-handed instruments altered for left-handed playing.

Changing the strings on a right-handed guitar involves several things. The nut of the guitar has to be changed to accommodate the string widths. The bridge needs to be changed to make the lower strings longer than the top strings for correct intonation. On almost all acoustic guitars the bracing is non-symmetrical. On electric guitars altered this way, the controls will be backwards.

Tim Armstrong (Rancid)
Jabe Beyer
Jo Callis (The Rezillos/Human League) - Plays guitar left-handed.
Calogero - Plays guitar and bass left-handed [1]
Kurt Cobain (Nirvana)
Billy Ray Cyrus
Elliot Easton (The Cars)
Peter Ollie Halsall (Patto/ Boxer)
Jimi Hendrix
Aaron Le Tual
Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath)
George Johnson (Brothers Johnson)
Paul McCartney (The Beatles) McCartney first tried playing right-handed, but was making no progress. He saw a picture of Slim Whitman playing left-handed and realized that it was necessary to reverse the guitar, pick with the left hand, and reverse the strings (Babiuk 2001:14).
Al McKay (Earth, Wind & Fire/ Al McKay's L.A. Allstars)
Matt "Silofolous" Robertson (Saving Pluto/Nathan Lee and the Psychadelic Cemetery Kids)
Cesar Rosas (Los Lobos)
Jeffrey Steele
Slim Whitman
Zacky Vengeance
David Cook

[edit] Left-handed with strings backwards

These are players who play left-handed, but with the strings as on an unaltered right-handed guitar, thus the strings are backwards for a left-handed player. Some players in this category (e.g. Dick Dale and Albert King) had custom instruments that were basically a left-handed guitar with the strings as on a right-handed guitar, since they had learned to play that way.