What I Learned while My Computer was Out Sick Part 2

After learning to do the basic sweep across the strings strum correctly, and learning my first song, I went through a micro evolution. Probably the same evolution the early autoharp players went through except they knew what they were doing and I had their experience documented for me. You see, the next song after what I had just learned was "High on a Mountain Top" It's written in 2/2 time. The last song I learned was in 4/4 time so I strummed once for each beat. (I think that's right...) So for 2/2 I assume that I strum once for every two beats. So "High on a Mountain Top" is harder because its faster. On top of that it has two very hard chord transitions. The first one is D to Em to A to D again. The second one is even harder with G to Em to A7 to D. I don't know about you, but for my stubby fingers this was quite a reach. Then, by the time I got to D, my fingers were off their base chord positions and I had to stop in the song to get reoriented again. This was impossible! Then I remembered what I had read about alternate chord bar arrangements. Remember, I mentioned that earlier and how I did not understand how you could know how to rearrange the cord bars if you had never played? Well, now I know. I had to do something to at least get that Em chord bar closer to the G and D chord bars. In all the web sites I looked at, one chord bar arrangement kept coming up again and again. I found out that this chord arrangement was created by the famous autoharp player Bryan Bowers.

I leaned that the chord bar arrangement you get from the factory is arranged best technically. But as a computer programmer I've learned that the arrangments I've come up with that make the most technical sense are not always the best arrangement for the people that use my software. This seems to be the same story here. Mr. Bowers seems to have come up with a better trade off between the technical arrangement and what works best for the player. This page of the "Autoharp Works" web site gives three different arrangements for the 21 bar harp. But only Mr Bowers (marked on the page as the "Lewis Standard", allows you to rearrange the chord bars without changing the felt on the bars. The other two require you to change the felt on at least one bar to get a different chord from the factory original.

So you think I'd have gone with the "Lewis Standard". Wrong. After finally understanding this whole chord bar rearrange thingy, I did some experimenting on different songs in my simplified LDS Hymns book and found that the best arrangement for me was the one marked as the "Tuck V7th middle". This arrangement wants you to replace the factory Bb7 chord bar with a Bm chord bar. But I haven't had a strong need for either a Bb7 or a Bm chord. So I don't currently see any problem in just putting the Bb7 where the Bm should go.

I didn't see any problem with me swapping around the chord bars on my harp except for one, such swapping would require me to rearrange the placement of the chord bar buttons. How was I going to do that? My harp is from Oscar Schmidt. It appears that to the rest of the autoharp world the solution to this problem is such a "no brainer" that almost no one has bothered to document it. That's unfortunate for beginners like me. After much searching on the subject, it was the "Autoharp Store" that slightly redemed themselves by having a paragraph in their document on changing chord bars that says:

"21 Chord models are designed so that you can arrange the chord bars to your preference. You can create your own arrangement by simply arranging the chord bar to the position that you desire. Fit the chord buttons so that they align with the holes in the cover."

The reference to "21 Chord models" is strictly to Oscar Schmidt models like mine. WAS I EXCITED! Everything was in place for my new arrangement! I made the change myself. I found that the Oscar Schmidt chord bar buttons have a tab on the bottom. This tab fits into a gutter on the chord bar that allows the button to slide up and down along the length of the chord bar. The corrisponding hole in the chord bar cover is what holds the button in place. The actual chord bar has a hole on the high string side and a "U" shaped grove on the low string side. You put the bar's hole over the correct peg/spring combination at the new position. Then you rotate the bar into place so that its button doesn't slide out of place or knock into the button next to it, and the "U" grove fits over the peg/spring combination on the low stirng side of the new positon. Its VERY simple even for a legally blind kluts like me!

The new arrangement is WONDERFUL! every chord combination I've needed so far, and I've tired it on a lot of songs since doing the change, has been within very easy reach, including the infamous Em chord!

Now that I had this done, I ran into my next evolutionary step that I'd better cover next time, since it's getting a bit late.