Mel Bay's Complete Method for Autoharp or Chromaharp

The most complete, authoritative text available on autoharp. Teacher and author Meg Peterson presents a colorful array of songs and styles as well as a myriad of strum patterns in an easy-to-understand manner. This self-teaching course features Meg's highly acclaimed system for teaching melody solo performance on the autoharp. Each of its 48 lessons builds on the one before it, with a reference section included for those who wish to learn about music notation, theory, harmony, transposition, and chord substitution. There are 122 practice songs and many more suggested ones. Also included is information on tuning, changing strings, and altering chord position on the instrument. The CD is a stereo teaching tape with vocal instruction and performance demonstrating many of the strum patterns and tunes in the book at full tempo with a singer.

Meg Peterson is the premier Autoharp teacher in the U. S. She has introduced thousands of people-- teachers, students, young and old-- to the delights of this versatile instrument. She has spent the last thirty years collecting and transcribing traditional and innovative ways to play the autoharp, which has resulted in the writing and arranging of thirty books. In her first method book, written in 1965, she introduced her own scoring tablature that has become universal to all autoharp pickers, from beginners to advanced players. Since the autoharp arrived on the musical scene relatively recently, as musical history goes, very few people had learned to do anything with it, except push buttons and stroke. Meg, therefore, invented many of the strums and new techniques shown in her books, using existing guitar and banjo patterns as guidelines, and transcribed them in a way that is playable on the autoharp. As a result, the autoharp has come into its own as an integral! and respected part of country and bluegrass combos. Meg has travelled widely, giving workshops as far away as Australia, England, and South Africa, and has been a judge at the Walnut Valley Festial in Winfield, Kansas. In July 1995 Meg was inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame for her exceptional contribution to the autoharp community. Meg is also a violinist and was educational director of Oscal Schmidt International for 15 years. During that time she worked extensively with music educators, classroom teachers, music therapists and special educators, showing them how to use the autoharp in their teaching programs. Ms. Peterson also served as executive director of Music Education for the Handicapped for six years, during which time she ran three international symposia.