Autoharp

An autoharp is a zither, a flat box with strings stretched across it, fitted with a row of chord bars. Most modern autoharps have 36 strings, and standard models have 12, 15 or 21 bars for major, minor and dominant 7th chords. One hand presses a bar and the other strums. Players lay it flat on a table (the three feet on the back are there for this) or stand it upright in the lap with its back against the chest.

Press the C bar and its felt pads land on every string except the Cs, Es and Gs, so a strum from the low end to the high end rings out a C major chord across several octaves. The F bar leaves F, A and C, and the G7 bar leaves G, B, D and F. Those three bars are the I, IV and V7 chords in C major, enough for a lot of folk and country songs. There are no chord shapes to learn, which is why the autoharp makes lists of the easiest instruments for playing chords.

The word autoharp first appears in a US patent granted to Charles F. Zimmermann in 1882, and Oscar Schmidt still makes autoharps. Maybelle Carter brought the instrument to prominence in the late 1940s, playing it as a lead instrument with her daughters, the Carter Sisters.

A diatonic autoharp is strung for one key, or for two or three as a compromise. It drops the strings for notes outside the scale and doubles the notes inside it, which gives a fuller, more ringing chord in fewer keys. Diatonic explains what “in the key” means.

Suzuki conceived the Omnichord as an electronic autoharp, with a touch strip in place of the strings. What is an Omnichord tells that part of the story.