Mel Bay Scottish Airs and Ballads for Autoharp [Paperback]

Alex Usher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 24, 2003

A collection of 25 traditional melodies written in standard music notation as well as autoharp tablature. Accompaniment chords are indicated. The melody-playing techniques used are explained here in detail. Also included is a professional performance CD which provides more than an hour of listening pleasure to all of the tunes, including "Wild Mountain Thyme," "My Luv is Like a Red, Red Rose," "White Cockade," "Corn Rigs," "Auld Lang Syne" and more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alex Usher has collected and performed folk songs for over fifty years. She has amassed a treasure trove of songs that work well with children, and used them through the years to amuse her own four children (who later joined her and her husband on the stage) as well as to entertain youngsters at the St. Louis Children's Hospital where she was the volunteer "Music Lady" in the late 1970s. In the early days of TV she was a regular performer on several children's series on PBS Channel 9 in St. Louis. (in one she was a jack-in-the-box who popped out and did a song and a dance in each episode!) She still shares her music with her grandchildren and their classmates.

More recently she has specialized in playing the autoharp as a solo instrument. Mel Bay's Basic Melodic Autoharp Solos is her contribution to helping folks teach themselves this art. She is a National Autoharp Champion, a four-time winner in the International Competition at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield KS, and has made several solo autoharp CDs in the last several years. Currently she does a program of folk songs called "Hand-me-down Music" for the Missouri Humanities Council, and gives many other performances, primarily in the St. Louis area.

Product Details

• Paperback: 40 pages
• Publisher: Mel Bay Publications, Inc. (September 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786607319
• ISBN-13: 978-0786607310
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 8.5 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,807,705 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)