Aside from being a mirror-image of right-handed chords e.g. fretting the notes using the right hand and strumming with the left hand, there is absolutely no difference in the structure of chords e.g. the notes that make up the chord, regardless of whether you are left-handed or right-handed. Chord charts however can be confusing for left-handed guitarists as they are designed to reference a right-handed guitar’s fretboard facing the guitarist.
To properly explain the reason why left and right-handed chords are the same, in the following post we’ll dive into a small amount of music theory and also touch on how to read chord charts if you are left-handed.
How are Chords Built?
Without turning this post into a complex discussion on music theory, there are essentially 12 notes in Western music: A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#
This is known as the chromatic scale and is used to divide the octave (the difference in frequency between one note and another of the same note value) into 12 equal pitches, otherwise known as 12-tone equal temperament.
All scales are derived from the chromatic scale, including the major scale. And, from there all chords can be built using the scale degrees of the major scale, for example, Major and minor, augmented and diminished chords all use different scale degree formulas. For those unaware scale degrees are simply the notes in a scale referenced by number, from ascending to descending.
For example, a C major scale consists of the following notes:
C Maj Scale
| Pitch | Scale Degree |
| C | 1 |
| D | 2 |
| E | 3 |
| F | 4 |
| G | 5 |
| A | 6 |
| B | 7 |
I’ve used the C Major scale in the example above as there are no accidentals (sharps or flats included within this scale which may otherwise further complicate things).
Taking the notes in the scale above, to form an A major triad (the most common chords, known as triads as they consist of three different notes) we first take the root note C and then skip every second note (moving up in thirds) until our chord consists of three notes, the root C, the third scale degree (E) and the fifth scale degree (G).
If we were building a minor chord the second note in the chord would be a half-step lower in pitch, and use a slightly different scale degree formula, but that’s another story for another post.
Why right-handed chords are identical to left-handed chords
The notes that make up the C major chord above are the same whether you play the guitar right or left-handed, as this is how all chords are constructed, based on their respective scale degree formulas regardless of orientation or the instrument being played.
The confusion some left-handed guitarists experience when first learning chords on the guitar is more than likely caused by chord charts, which for us left-handers are a mirror image of a left-handed guitar and therefore less intuitive, resulting in the confusion as mentioned earlier about apparent left-handed chords.
Reading (right-handed) Chord Charts
Chord charts (and scale diagrams) are designed predominantly for right-handed guitarists. This makes sense when you consider only approx. 10% of the population are left-handed and within this group, many left-handers choose to learn the guitar right-handed. As a result, we left-handed guitarists, for the most part, are stuck with right-handed chord charts. If you are anything like me, you might find right-handed scale charts even more difficult to interpret.
The good news, however, is guitar tab is neither left-handed nor right-handed and especially useful if left-handed and can’t be bothered dealing with scale diagrams.
Left-handed chord charts
You will find specially designed left-handed chord charts and diagrams, including complete books and plenty of left-handed chord charts online if you seek them out specifically. These are extremely useful, but if you are looking for the chords for a song you wish to learn, 99 times out of 100 when searching online or at popular tab sites such as ultimate-guitar.com the chords will be shown in a right-handed orientation.
Because of this, despite the intuitiveness of left-handed chord charts it’s useful to become accustomed to reading right-handed chord charts and making the adjustment on the fly.
Reading right-handed chord charts as a lefty
The chord chart below shows a C major chord chart. The bass strings are shown on the left side of the diagram and the treble strings are on the right.
If you are right-handed this is intuitive because if you held the guitar out in front of you the bass strings would be on the left.
However, if you are left-handed the opposite is true, as the bass strings are on the left-hand side and the treble strings on the right (please refer to the second example below)
While this can be limiting, to begin with, in most cases, if you continue to read chord charts over time, or simply dedicate an hour of your time to getting used to reading right-handed chord charts and converting them in your head to left-handed, most left-handed guitarists will be largely untroubled by right-handed chord charts, although it is still annoying! And, regardless of whether you plan to use left-handed chord charts and scale diagrams to learn the guitar, there are still going to be plenty of times when the only chord chart you have available is right-handed, so I would recommend not relying solely on left-handed chord charts completely.
Summary
If you are new to the guitar some of the information above, particularly regarding music theory may be new to you. If so, I recommend not taking the route a lot of guitarists take and skipping music theory completely. There’s a lot of useful information that can be taken just from a basic understanding of music which is helpful if you are left-handed and required to interpret chord charts and scale diagrams due to living in a right-handed world.
