Why does jimi hendrix play upside down

Kevin Dupzyk Kevin is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. More From Music. Hendrix upside down and backwards Discussion in ' The Backstage ' started by tone seaker , Apr 24, Hendrix playing right handed both regular and upside down. Something a lot of folks might not know is that Jimi could play either right or left handed, with the guitar strung either way, he just preferred playing lefty..

Amazing fer sure! DaDoc , Apr 24, Joined: Oct 19, Messages: 30, Likes Received: 28, The Cellar forum. What's it for? Vinsanitizer , Apr 24, Jimi Hendrix was taught by his father to play right handed, but he also learned left handed.

I know a lot will argue this, he never played upside down. I on the other hand play a left hand guitar left handed, but the strings are in fact upside down.

Love Hendrix!!! Chrome , Apr 24, Crikey , Wooferhead1 , DaDoc and 1 other person like this. This one is more likely felt than heard but can definitely influence the player's technique.

The pole pieces which are staggered for certain strings sizes will be different and change the way individual strings sound. On a normally worn Strat the upper horn, which is the longer one, will have the strap attached to it. Wearing it upside down will bring the the fretboard further away from one's body.

This will make fretting open chords and notes lower down on the fretboard harder to get to and notes higher up will be easier to get to. The cutaways of the two horns are not equal. The lower horn on a regularly worn Strat has a deeper cut into the body to allow easier access to upper frets. Wearing it upside down will make access to upper frets harder and the player will have to adjust his fingering technique to reach them.

This needing to work hard for upper frets is something many players of Gibson Les Pauls say influences their playing. These two points sound contradictory and one might think they cancel each other out, but in reality it doesn't work like that. I'll try to explain, however I'm no guitar maker or acoustic engineer so it might be quite technically inaccurate Let's begin:. As you can see, there are 3 single-coil pickups on a Stratocaster. In this case, each pickup possesses 6 permanent magnetic pole-pieces that are located under each strings.

When a string is vibrating, it creates variations of the magnetic field maintained between the coil and the string thus creating an electric signal sent via the guitar's jack output. Now, since every string has a different diameter, each permanent magnetic pole-piece is designed and ajusted in height for example specifically for each string. This is the question explored in a new paper by psychologist Stephen Christman via TwentyFourBit , who argues that Hendrix's versatility informed not just his guitar-playing — but his lyrics too.

According to Christman, who is based at the University of Toledo, Hendrix was not strictly left-handed. Although he played his right-handed guitar upside down, and used his left hand to throw, comb his hair and hold cigarettes, Hendrix wrote, ate and held the telephone with his right hand. He was, Christman argues, "mixed-right-handed". And this "mixed"-ness, signaling better interaction between the left and right hemispheres of the guitarist's brain, suffused every part of his music.

Certainly the guitarist's technical virtuosity is clear.