jasondrums wrote:
Ahh... I misread your post. I started playing guitar a few years ago and it does seem weird that you ask the most out of your left hand when playing if you're a righty.
But is does make you wonder of people who play guitar left-handed are actually left handed in the rest of life or whether, early on in learning to play, noticed the same about the left hand doing more and decided to switch round. I assume it means learning the chord patterns upside down but, if your learn that way from the start, is it any harder?
Back to the original question, I am mostly right handed in that I can do everything with my right including write and things that require fine control. I can also do a reasonable variety of things with my left too, though writing isn't one of them. As an example, sitting at breakfast, if there is a jug of milk to my left, within reach of my left hand but not my right, and I want some in a cup of coffee, I can reach out to pick it up, then pour the milk still holding the jug in my left hand. I have watched other people in the same situation get the jug with their left hand, put in down on the table, pick it up with their right and then pour.
There maybe something genetic in this. My dad does some things with his left hand by preference, something called cross-dominance. Sometimes it is possible to carry recessive genes with no noticeable effect, yet sometimes carriers have watered-down effect compared to people who have two copies.
For example, people with ginger hair tend to also have very fair skin that burns easily. The gene for ginger hair is recessive and people who are carriers, i.e. who have one copy of it, while not having ginger hair, have fairer skin than those with zero copies of that gene and don't tan as easily as most people do.
So maybe left-handedness is a recessive characteristic and cross-dominance is what happens when you're carrying the left handed gene.