Links & More

Favorite Links Shadrach Productions- A History Corrections pages and MIDI files for books

YouTube sightings!

For autoharp, have a listen/look-see here.
For hammered dulcimer (way back in 1991 at the NEFFA festival!), click here. This is a collection of four videos. A much younger me(!) is playing at 2:14 (jamming) and 6:08 (playing a jig with Rum & Onions--catch the technique, folks!--while the dancers dance "A Flirting Attempt", choreographed by dance friend Marian Hepburn in NJ), if you want to scroll ahead (but Bob McQuillen is always good to hear!). And just in case you think that's me playing autoharp with Drew Smith and Bob at the beginning of the video, it's Pamela Roberts of Massachusetts. I had been playing autoharp less than a year when this video was taken, so the hammered dulcimer was my instrument of choice for this venue.

Favorite Links

Here are a few of my favorite links (hmmm, is that ringing a string?), listed alphabetically:

Autoharp Quarterly—for the autoharp enthusiast. (For a list of recent articles published in my column, "The Diatonic Corner," click here.)

Body mapping—When your body map is in synch with how your anatomy really works, you can get more music for less physical work. Body mapping is an enlightening concept that players of all instruments, regardless of level or purpose, will do well to apply for years of efficient, pain-free music-making.

The Choral Journal—choral conductors who missed my article, "Accompanying Your Choir with the Hammered Dulcimer" in the September 2002 issue can catch up with it here.

Melodious Accord—for the most fabulous choral singing and arranging experiences you can have with gifted choral arranger and musician, Alice Parker. (Four-part harmony proved challenging to write until I studied with Alice at her Melodious Accord Fellowship I & III programs. Now, four parts is easy, and my ear hears the "layers" in music more readily.)

Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering—the premier autoharp event in the world. Home of the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Championship.

Music Publisher—home of the music software I use (it took me a long time to find something that would do everything easily, and this is it). Music Publisher 5 is very much "off the mouse" when it comes to entering clefs, keys, notes, beams, accents, etc., as it is for many other operations when working with keystroke commands. Free demo available at this site, and the developer (in Scotland, lads and lassies) also hosts a discussion group where users ask how-to questions and exchange information about music and notational issues.

Original Dulcimer Players Club—hosts the annual Funfest the third weekend in July in Evart, MI (it's the dulcimer festival to end all dulcimer festivals, so if you play, go!).

Walnut Valley Festival—the National Hammered Dulcimer Championship and International Autoharp Championship both occur here, along with other national and international championships in guitar, mandolin, banjo, mountain dulcimer, along with a regional fiddle championship.

Westminster Choir College—my alma mater, and home to (as you can imagine) great choral-singing traditions. Summer week-long workshops, as well as Saturday Seminars during the year, cover a variety of topics for music educators, church musicians, and performers.

Shadrach...

...is the name of my first dulcimer, which I purchased in 1978 from Michael Autorino (1917-1987). It is named for one of the three fellows in the book of Daniel in the Bible, chapter 3 (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's idol at the sound of many instruments, including, according to the King James Version, the dulcimer. A translating error was later discovered; the dulcimer appears to have really been some kind of bagpipe.)
        So on August 1, 1983, exactly at 12 noon (yes!), Shadrach Productions became reality at the Burlington County NJ Clerk's office. I proceeded to sell dulcimers for Michael Autorino, and through those sales raised half the capital to publish my first book, Striking Out and Winning! This was followed by The Hammered Dulcimer A-Chording to Lucille Reilly in 1990, and then a second edition of Striking Out in 1992.
        In 1988, I discovered a name index in my Bible concordance (which I'd had for years but never ventured to the back where it was--who needs to look for an index when that's all a concordance is!), where I learned that Shadrach means "rejoicing in the way." Good choice for a happy instrument, don't you think?
        Listeners and students always muse: Are there a Meshach and Abednego? Yes. I won Meshach, a 15-15 Professional model dulcimer built by Bob Tack (1952-2004), when I took second place in the 1991 National Hammered Dulcimer Championship. Bob also built Abednego, a lightweight version of Meshach.
        Shadrach's publishing concerns have expanded to include instructional materials for diatonic autoharp, which I began playing in 1990 (after telling myself in 1987 that I would never play autoharp: Ah, never say never!). Since becoming the first person to win both Mountain Laurel Autoharp Champion and International Autoharp Champion in the same year (1995), I've been slowly assembling a series of monographs (small booklets of 28-32 pages devoted to digging deeply into one topic), two of which you can learn more about in the Marketplace on this site. A book about how to play diatonic autoharp is also in the works.
        Through Shadrach Productions, I remain dedicated to providing quality instruction to both of these wonderful instruments and hope to continue to serve the music-making public through continued fine volumes of instruction and arrangements. For more information about current products, click here.

Complimentary MIDI files to "The Pumping Felt Monograph Series"

Free MIDI files for The Flowers of Edinburgh

Corrections pages

As much as we try to avoid them, mistakes and edits do happen.
If you own The Hammered Dulcimer A-Chording to Lucille Reilly or How to Create and Play the Ultratonic Autoharp, click on the links below to get a corrections page. (Note: Each page shows a "last revised" date. If you already have a corrections page, compare the date on that page with what's here. You may not have to waste another tree to print again.)

A-Chording corrections Ultratonic corrections

If you find a correction in any Shadrach publication, let us know so it can be added to the appropriate title.

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