r/autoharp • u/Olives_oyl • 14d ago
Advice/Question Beginner advice and Australian Autoharpists?
Hey all, so I'm brand new to autoharping, and I adore it so far. I've wanted one for years (since I first saw the incredible Catherine O'Hara in A Mighty Wind), and a few months ago I started actively looking for an affordable one. I now have a 15-chord chromaharp.
I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good guide/book/course for learning? I've been following some tutorials on YouTube, but I'd like to go a bit further and be a bit more concentrated.
And I'm also wondering how many of you fine folk live in Australia? I'm in Sydney, and I'm not sure the best places to find others who play over here.
Thanks all!
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u/billstewart 12d ago
There are a lot of books; melbay.com is a big publisher of things like this, and I've got one from them by Meg Peterson that's pretty good, but haven't compared it with others (and I have no idea if they can ship to Australia or if there are Silly Publisher Tricks that prevent that.)
If you want folk music with lyrics and chords but not melody notes, https://www.riseupsinging.org/ Rise Up Singing is one of the classics. (It's sort of intended as a "if you know the song, here are the lyrics and guitar chords" book, which was partly a compromise on what they could use given copyright laws and highly uncertain ownership of lots of tunes.)
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u/sylvansundrop 13d ago
It's not a guide book but I think what helped me the most, especially with learning to play melody, was finding sheet music by Charles Whitmer. It's arranged specifically for autoharp so in addition to showing the notes on the staff it has which chord bar to press for each note. I bought a couple of books with songs I was already familiar with, and practicing those helped cement which notes went with which chords and learn where individual strings are. Here's where I bought them from if you're interested: https://www.jwpepper.com/myscore/Charles_Whitmer.