How to help a friend who's lefty to learn the basics?

[Daniel Sobota]

Mind you, I’m the beginnerest beginner myself as well. So how do I help my friend in learning chords when I can only explain it to him playing right handed? I sent him the link of the school and he started watching the beginner videos (he flipped the screen so Papa G looks like he’s a lefty haha), but I want to give him my (small) knowledge as well.
I just realized that being a lefty sucks for the most part, so props to Zacky for doing it so greatly. We need him to make a couple of videos haha.

 

[idssdi]

Refer to fretting/picking hand and name the frets.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

@daniel this is so great that you and your friend are kind of on this journey together!
The funny thing is, is that I too had to teach my left-handed singer how to play guitar, however she had to learn right-handed because every guitar she was around, was right-handed. I would STRONGLY encourage him to make sure he is learning on a left-handed guitar, or at least one that is restrung to be that way. Because it does take left-handed players a little more work to train their non-dominant hand to do a dominant thing and they may progress slower and start to feel insignificant. Not to mention, for some reason, left-handed people think differently and process things differently. But ultimately, the fingers, frets, strings and shapes are ALL the same. It doesn’t matter what hand you use, it’s still essentially the same thing.
It may look and feel weird for you to look at his fingers/frets and try to help, but just remember that it’s still the same thing, just in a different view

 

[Joey C]

Hey man, best bet is to just like ids said, tell them the fret and string. You could also have them pick out some tabs for a song/chord/scale etc and sit back and watch them play and give out pointers. Like jak said also, its gonna be the same thing just in a different view.
Shred on man.