Re: Starting Left-handed or right
At some point, you have to just do what works. If you've struggled for years without any improvement in specific tensile strength -- how many more years to you plan to plow into that wall? If you think that playing lefty will work better for you, then go left. Don't fall into the sunk time fallacy. You should have enough evidence for your strengths that you can make an informed choice on which hand would work better on mandolin.
It's true there may be lots of instruments you won't be comfortable with, but i own seven mandolins and generally only play one of them. It's all I need. And if playing lefty doesn't seem to be working -- well, then try it the other way around. Someone on these boards taught himself the other hand just as an exercise, iirc, so switching is possible. You play a bunch of instruments already, you can always consider left-handed and right-handed mandolin as separate instruments, if being a lefty doesn't work out. It isn't cheating to play a comfortable instrument; you won't lose any musician cred because you chose the path of least resistance. You can struggle all you want on your other instruments -- we'll give you permission to enjoy mandolin in whatever fashion works best.
--------------------------------
1920 Lyon & Healy bowlback
1923 Gibson A-1 snakehead
1952 Strad-o-lin
1983 Giannini ABSM1 bandolim
2009 Giannini GBSM3 bandolim
2011 Eastman MD305
Bookmarks