The Team

Having played guitar for more than 30 years, I've been playing autoharp for about 7 years.  I took to it immediately, like a long lost friend!  I have been on staff, taught classes, and performed at California Autoharp Gathering for the past three years, and am going back in 2025!   I have competed at Mountain Laurael Autoharp Gathering the past two years, and I won 3rd Place (2023) and went back to win 1st Place (2024)!

I am excited to be setting up this website, and pulling together a team of great autoharpists to share freely their tips, tricks, teaching, history, stories, photos, and more!!!

I am also a full-time pastor, a husband, and father of two great children!  I also have a youtube channel called Autoharp at the Altar.

I saw my first autoharp in fourth grade when my music teacher, Ms. Viets, brought one to class and used it to teach us some songs. She played it on her lap with a felt flat pick and I don’t recall being much impressed with the sound it made. My father was an amateur violinist, and he started teaching me to play violin about the same time. I played violin seriously up through high school when I made two important discoveries: (1) I was never going to become a good violinist, and (2) I had a good-enough ear to recognize what a poor violinist sounded like (I heard one every time I practiced the violin!).

I started college during the “folk-boom” of the early 60’s and like most of us with any degree of musical ability, I learned to play folk-style guitar and became somewhat competent. Then, one night in 1968, I heard San Diego-based folksinger Bob White play the autoharp well. What a revelation! The next time I went home, I bought the only autoharp that I could find (a 15-bar, 2-row Chromaharp) and taught myself to play it like Bob White did. A few years later, I was in grad school and I had worn out that first Chromaharp and bought a second one (I didn’t know any better). I got my PhD, met my first wife while I was performing at a coffeehouse, started a software company, divorced, became an MIT staff scientist, remarried…

Around 1997, I discovered the autoharp-interest group, Cyberpluckers, on the internet. Then, in 1998, my wife, Lynda, and I attended our first Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering (MLAG). What a shock! More than one autoharp player in the same place! Custom-made instruments! Actual classes! I bought an Orthey chromatic and sold my Chromaharp at the silent auction. The next year brought an Orthey G/D diatonic into my collection. The next year after that, a Fladmark F/Bb joined the fold and Lynda started playing the autoharp herself. Our instrument collection now numbers more than a dozen autoharps (let alone guitars, banjos, dulcimers…but no violins).

We’ve never missed an MLAG since 1998. I’ve made the finals of the MLAG contest twice, and Lynda and I have won the “Leonard Reid Open Mike” contest twice. Just this year (2024) I published my history book about MLAG “History of a Gathering”. Lynda and I teach workshops at MLAG, and we consider the autoharp community our “extended family”.

In 2004, I started writing articles for the “Autoharp Quarterly” magazine and I continued to write for AQ until it stopped publishing nearly two decades later in 2021. I took over the“Simply Classic” column from Linda Huber in 2010 in every issue of AQ (45 classical pieces arranged for the autoharp), channeling my love of classical music that was instilled in my by my father, Ms. Viets, and other high-school music teachers who put up with my violin playing. I put an article on music theory in most issues starting in 2004, again repeating what these early teachers had given me. 

I am hoping through this website to provide the knowledge I’ve gained over the years to a next generation of autoharp players. 

Tom Schroeder is an internationally recognized author, instructor, and

performer on the autoharp. Thousands of autoharp players have read

Tom’s instructional articles and play his published musical

arrangements. His YouTube Channel The Autoharp Player’s

Companion has one hundred melodies for beginning level players to

learn. Tom’s dynamic playing style can be heard at his TSchroeder

Autoharp YouTube Channel where he has numerous demonstration

videos and recent albums that are free to stream. He is a member of the

Autoharp Hall of Fame.

Ivan Stiles is known in autoharp circles across the country as an autoharpist of unique ability; not just as a performer, but also as a recording artist, instructor, author, and co-founder and co-editor of Autoharp Quarterly® magazine from 1988 until 1997.

A member of the Autoharp Hall of Fame since 2000, Ivan Stiles brings a unique blend of traditional to contemporary music in the folk tradition to his audiences. Intricate fiddle-speed tunes, old-time favorites, traditional ballads, and original songs are skillfully interpreted on the autoharp, mountain dulcimer, bowed psaltery, and musical saw. At the competition level, Ivan won the 2006 Mountain Laurel Autoharp Championship, the 1991 International Autoharp Championship, the 1987 World Autoharp Championship, and the 1985 Great Lakes Regional Championship.

In 2018, Ivan joined with Chuck Kupferschmidt to form the musical duo, Acoustic Coots. Chuck adds the guitar, banjo, mandolin, and fiddle to the mix.

He has five recordings: Rounding Pickering Bend, Pickin’ On The Porch, Promises Kept, and Lordy Me! featuring the autoharp, and Pennsylvania Sawyer featuring the musical saw. He also has authored a book, Jigs and Reels For The Autoharp. Stiles is also included on Autoharp Legacy and Music From Autoharp Quarterly® Vol. 1, 2, and 3.

Loren Todd Crowley has been involved with the autoharp since first hearing Bryan Bowers at the Birchmere more than 40 years ago.  The diatonic autoharp soon became Loren's primary instrument for performing folk music.  Collecting things has always been a passion so collecting autoharps of all kinds came naturally.  These included nearly every make and model of luthier autoharps and more Oscar Schmidts than can be counted.  Autoharps flow like water.  The autoharp is a simple instrument with multiple variations and puzzles to be solved.  Loren has developed tandem chord bar layouts, like the Prizim and Diaprizim to expand the number of chords an autoharp can play with limited chord bars.   Sharing this love of the autoharp took Loren to more than 100 folk festivals in the USA and Canada.  Also Loren has always been more than willing to share knowledge and ideas with fellow autoharp enthusiasts.