Backwards Guitar
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Other music related lounges
Forum Name: Music and Musicians Exchange
Forum Description: Talk with and get feedback from other musicians on the site
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=85601
Printed Date: November 25 2024 at 16:45
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 11.01 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Backwards Guitar
Posted By: Smurph
Subject: Backwards Guitar
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 17:27
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So, I play guitar backwards. Right handed guitars are just flipped upsidedown by me, and they are not restrung. It allows me to play "weird" chords that other guitarists can't play. It also puts me at a disadvantage when learning other people's music, but I have well over 120 compositions between myself and my band so that is not a problem either.
One thing though, WHAT OTHER GUITARISTS PLAY THIS WAY?
I am having trouble searching for anyone. I try googling different things but no one is going to use the same terminology.
Also, sorry if this is in the wrong thread, I wasn't sure which thread to put it in. |
Replies:
Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 17:29
| I believe Jimi himself did something like that ... along with Paul McCartney. Correct me if I'm wrong. |
Posted By: NotAProghead
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 17:34
Albert King comes to mind. ------------- Who are you and who am I to say we know the reason why... (D. Gilmour) |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 17:48
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When I saw the thread title here, I thought it was about guitars played backwards as in flipped over like Syd Barret did on his first solo album. Somehow he could pan out how it would end up sounding, which I find pretty interesting. It certainly had Gilmour a bit bamboozled... ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 17:55
 . Albert King, huh? I know Jimi was influenced by King. |
Guldbamsen wrote:Posted By: colorofmoney91
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 17:59
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Doyle Bramhall II plays guitar like that. ------------- http://hanashukketsu.bandcamp.com" rel="nofollow - Hanashukketsu |
Posted By: Guldbamsen
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 18:02
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What about upright guitar? ------------- “The Guide says there is an art to flying or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - Douglas Adams |
Posted By: PabstRibbon
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 18:17
+1
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Posted By: PabstRibbon
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 18:18
Hendrix was playing with a right handed guitar but he changed the strings to make an "home made" left-handed guitar
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 18:28
*sigh* why don't people read the OP - Jimi Hendrix did not just flip a right-handed guitar over, he also restrung it for left-hand playing, as did Paul McCartney for both bass and 6-string guitars, as shown in this pic:
 also Tony Iommi, Kurt Cobain and most other left-handed players.
Whereas, as Alan correctly asserts, Doyle Bramhall II plays a normally strung right-handed guitar upside down:
 Other backwards guitar players include Dick Dale and Dan Swano (Edge of Sanity, Katatonia etc) ------------- What? |
Posted By: Slartibartfast
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 18:35
Why the hell should the bassier strings be at the top anyway?  I've actually never tried it with opposite hands before, just did, didn't work for me. But anyway, backwards isn't the right word I think. It's opposite-handed. When you change the string order I think it should be called opposite handed mirrored stringed or something. ------------- Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened... 
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Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 18:47
------------- What? |
Posted By: PabstRibbon
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 19:24
Jimmy Haslip play backward too  |
Posted By: colorofmoney91
Date Posted: March 14 2012 at 21:13
 I had no idea Dan Swano played that way. That's neat to know. ------------- http://hanashukketsu.bandcamp.com" rel="nofollow - Hanashukketsu |
Posted By: Smurph
Date Posted: March 15 2012 at 00:55
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Dan Swano? Really? Seems like I have a bunch of guitar parts to learn. Crimson by Edge of Sanity doesn't seem that difficult. Thanks for all the help guys. http://vimeo.com/21261733" rel="nofollow - http://vimeo.com/21261733
In case anyone cares, this is me playing backwards. Kinda crap recording but whatever, also the band is called Pseudo/Sentai now. |
Posted By: clarke2001
Date Posted: April 12 2012 at 12:47
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I'm left handed. I can play right-handed guitar upside-down when necessary. However, I can strum it -but there's no way I will play arpeggio. Also, it's really easy to hurt yourself; top string is thin and sharp. The chords are fun. They're actually easier most of the time. ------------- |
Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: April 12 2012 at 14:13
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I'm left handed but just play a right handed guitar the normal way. I've always thought it was an advantage to have my dominant hand doing the fretting. ------------- You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all. |
Posted By: Smurph
Date Posted: April 12 2012 at 15:56
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Posted By: ClemofNazareth
Date Posted: April 12 2012 at 19:17
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I'm left-handed and tried playing a right-handed guitar normally and inverted, although I never tried restringing it. I ended up buying a left-handed guitar and never looked back... ------------- "Peace is the only battle worth waging." Albert Camus |
Posted By: Negoba
Date Posted: April 12 2012 at 19:24
I've been playing for 25 years now, and at this point it's hard to know. I think it helped at first. It's a different set of skills than writing and you have to have coordination no matter which way you play. Left handed people have to do so many things both ways anyway... No comments from the peanut gallery.
------------- You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all. |
Posted By: Dean
Date Posted: May 08 2012 at 09:26
It would be a lot less confusing if we gave these things their proper name: backwards guitar is obviously Ratiug - upsidedown backwards guitar is ɹɐʇınƃ and upsidedown Guitar is פnıʇɐɹ.  ------------- What? |
Posted By: Epignosis
Date Posted: May 08 2012 at 16:35
I was just about to Google "Ratiug," too.  ------------- https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays" rel="nofollow - https://epignosis.bandcamp.com/album/a-month-of-sundays |
Posted By: Apache7
Date Posted: May 29 2012 at 07:53
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Check it out! Here's the real skinny on Doyle Bramhall II's Backward Telecaster. First of all, he's left-handed, so he took a left-handed Telecaster body and put a RIGHT-handed neck on it (so the tuning keys are pointing down), THEN, he strings it right-handed. In otherwords, the stringing is upside-down!!! Very Strange, indeed. Well, like I always tell a blind hooker, "I gotta hand it to ya".
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Posted By: HackettFan
Date Posted: July 21 2012 at 10:32
Me too. I'm left handed, but I play "right handed". The most complex coordination is required on the fret hand. The only people I have seen pick up a guitar for the first time and hold it "left handed" have been right handed in every other way. |
Posted By: kludge
Date Posted: August 15 2012 at 02:43
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My bandmate Beth Kinderman plays left-handed by flipping right-handed guitars over. What's even more twisted is that she's actually right-handed... she has an orthopedic problem in her left elbow that prevents her from playing traditional right-handed guitar. She's self-taught, and by the time she found out there was such thing as a left-handed guitar, she'd already written enough songs that she stuck with it. Between the upside-down fingerings, the oft-used capo, and the truly twisted chord changes she loves, it's amusing as heck to me to watch other guitarists try to play along with her at folkie music circles. I've been playing with her for years, and I know better than to try to read her hands.
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Posted By: Smurph
Date Posted: August 15 2012 at 02:45
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Kludge! What band is this? There aren't many of us that play like that! ------------- http://pseudosentai.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow - http://pseudosentai.bandcamp.com/ wtf |
Posted By: Sean Trane
Date Posted: August 15 2012 at 03:48
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Josh Pollock of Daevid Allen's University of Errors also plays a unrestrung right handed guitar as a leftie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdRXPRjst0I&feature=related" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdRXPRjst0I&feature=related Josh Pollock is the one in the red pyjama and you get a close up of his guitar around the six-mins mark (one of the most fun concerts I've seen too) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhPGXENyeFw&feature=related" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhPGXENyeFw&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHdub8m7XnQ&feature=related" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHdub8m7XnQ&feature=related Same concert, Daevid was looking intensely right into the eyes of this (unknown to me) woman standing next to me, and she was litteraly melting (though it's not plainly visible on the video)... I had dropped my jacket on the floor, and bending down to pick it up, her jeans' crotch area was dark blue of wetness... When she saw I saw and knew, she put one hand on my crotch then seeing that I was interested, she took me by the hand to the ladies' room... we missed the next 15 minutes of the concert btw: her name was NOT Caroline, and I suspect she knew Daevid didn't wear anything under that priest's robe (he showed it plainly to everyone at the end of the show, attempting to rape the little boy in the red pyjama) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dejFSwzrQM&feature=related" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dejFSwzrQM&feature=related ------------- let's just stay above the moral melee prefer the sink to the gutter keep our sand-castle virtues content to be a doer as well as a thinker, prefer lifting our pen rather than un-sheath our sword |
Posted By: Sheavy
Date Posted: August 15 2012 at 05:42
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I know Dick Dale does. ------------- 
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Posted By: Tapfret
Date Posted: August 15 2012 at 18:10
I smoke my pipe backwards. ------------- https://www.last.fm/user/Tapfret" rel="nofollow">  https://bandcamp.com/tapfret" rel="nofollow - Bandcamp |
Posted By: kludge
Date Posted: August 15 2012 at 22:11
http://bethkinderman.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow - Beth Kinderman & the Player Characters . Imagine if Lilith Fair had a prog band... it would be us. Listen to "Stone Game" from the Winter Is Coming album on the bandcamp link for the way she plays (she's on acoustic, I'm on electric). Or listen to the entire Fool's Trilogy track... Stone Game is the third in a trilogy of songs, and I made a point of matching the instrumentation through the entire trilogy so it sounds like a continuous piece. It started as a live track for months before recording, and I don't like to hear the individual songs out of the trilogy context. Another good one for her playing is "Blue Horizon", the opening track on Apocalypse Blues. She did all the guitars on that song - I was on bass. But yeah, love playing with her! We've built up a really great two-guitar thing together. She writes really complex, intricate songs, and I can't read her hands very well, so I have to really LISTEN and create complementary parts.
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