Customer Reviews

Mel Bay Presents Autoharp Method in Four Easy Steps (book and CD set)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book has about two and a half pages about musical theory, just over two pages of the actual four easy steps, and then a bunch of music to practice. The music is written in completely nonstandard notation, which isn't well explained: about a paragraph of explanation is given about how to read the music, but otherwise you're left to figure it out for yourself. Learning to play from this notation, which is unlike any other published autoharp music I've seen, won't help you at all when you try to read and play anything else.

Overall, while this method may work, I recommend against it for its lack of correlation to available sheet music.

I did not like this book at all. It was really hard to follow and was not very well explained or detailed enough in order to adequately play the instrument. This is especially true if the reader has had no previous experience with the autoharp. It gives the very basics to strumming and the barest basics to picking melodies. The author does not even include any musical notation. The CD that came with the book was not instructional, it was simply the author singing the songs. I would recommend "Beginning Autoharp Instruction Book" by Bonnie Phipps. This is a much clearer method to follow and I was much more successful with it.

I love this book. I did not even know what an autoharp was. I bought one, and needed help, since I did not know how to began to play. I bought this autoharp method book by Evo Bluestein. What a help, it was. But I needed help to understand all of the strums, and patterns. So I bought the Evo Blusetein instructional Beginning and advanced videos. They were an extention of this book. Very explanitory. Now I can play all the songs in this book by memory. I love this method better than all the rest, and I have all the rest of the books and vidieos out there. I played for our church talent show, and everyone really enjoyed it.