Originally Posted by: darickmendes

good day , so I am a left handed guitarist beginner and I own an electric guitar which is meant for right handed . Is it possible to get improved and play properly with it upside down or its really rare ?

Well, there's this guy. I hear he was pretty good....

Silliness aside, you can absolutely get better. There are a number of left handed guitarists from Jimi Hendrix (pictured), Eric Gales (awesome) to Eliot Easton who were all amazing players. So, no doubt being a lefty is not a reason to stop.

The challenge you may have with playing a righthanded guitar 'lefthandedly' is that it is still strung like a righthanded guitar. Meaning that the heaviest string is at the bottom and the lightest string is at the top (upside down). Not impossible as, if you go watch the amazing Eric Gales play, it's how Eric plays.

Things to be mindful of:

If you want to flip the strings on the righthanded guitar so that the heaviest is at the top and lightest at the bottom (a more standard way to string), you can't just flip the strings this way as the 'nut' at the top of the neck is cut generally for a specific string thickness so you would need to have someone replace the existing nut with a new nut cut for this restring. The person cutting the new nut would re-setup your guitar to play this way.

The benefit of doing this is that you do have to totally rearrange how you think about chords and playing. Particularly when doing lessons. If you left your strings 'upside down', when veiwing a lesson, you both have to 'flip' your head around watching a righthanded player, with you playing lefthanded, AND you have to think 'upside down' because your strings are upside down. Lots of brain flipping for a beginner.

It also depends in what your current righthanded guitar is. If it's a standard acoustic with no cutaway at the neck, no biggie to flip that over. If it's an electric guitar like a Les Paul-style single cutaway for a righthanded person, well, that will be more awkward.

With all that said, you may want to consider getting a proper lefthanded guitar. As a beginner, you likely don't know if guitar playing is going to stick and taking are the safe route of not buying a new guitar to meet your specific needs.

Reconsider this. I mean, it's fair to say that buying a new guitar is not always just as easy as going out to get a new one. It's investing more than just a couple of dollars so I don't say this flippantly. However, guitar playing as a beginner under the best of circumstances is never super-easy. Adding more challenges to your pathway only makes it harder. Not something you can't overcome. Clearly guys like Eric Gales wanted it so bad that he just sat there and figured it out.

If you can consider getting a guitar that meets you needs, do so.

To your original question; yes you can learn and many have. It more a matter of deciding where you're at and if you can work through those extra obstacles.

Don't give up though, playing guitar is awesome and I love all the years I've played.