Charles Whitmer has been teaching autoharp classes from 1985 to the present and has 35 years of public school music teaching experience with 31 of them teaching band.

In 2008 he was inducted into the Autoharp Hall of Fame. He is a current staff member of The Autoharp Quarterly and was also a long time staff member for The Autoharpoholic, a former international quarterly magazine.

He has a Bachelor of Music degree in education (1980) and a Master of Curriculum & Instruction (music education) degree (1989) both from the University of Houston. He is a member of the Texas Music Educators Association and the Association of Texas Small School Bands. He also formerly taught music for the Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DoDDS) at the US Army’s Camp Zama in Japan for one year and the Santa Fe (New Mexico) Schools for one year.

His workshops outside the public schools are primarily teaching autoharp classes. He also teaches workshops in Sacred Harp shape note singing, an American folk hymn tradition.

Programs for which he has taught autoharp and performed include Northwest Autoharp Gathering, Co-Founder of The Midwest Autoharp Academy, North Georgia Foothills Dulcimer Association Fall Festival, QuaranTune Virtual Dulcimer Fest, Palestine Old Time Music & Dulcimer Festival, Winter Creek Reunion Dulcimer Fest, California Autoharp Gathering, Lagniappe Dulcimer Fête, Augusta Heritage Arts Workshops, Ozark Folk Center, Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering, Willamette Valley Autoharp Gathering, California Traditional Music Society’s Summer Solstice Festival, Summer Stringalong in Wisconsin, Winter Festival of Acoustic Music in Texas, Little Rock Dulcimer Getaway, Lone Star State Dulcimer Festival, Gateway Dulcimer Music Festival, New Mexico Dulcimer Festival, Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering in New York, Buckeye Dulcimer Festival, Central Florida Dulcimer & Autoharp Festival as well as other festivals across the US and a few in Japan.

In addition to teaching autoharp workshops and performing on autoharp, he currently has 720 traditional song arrangements written out for autoharp in print with a goal of pushing that to 1000 songs by the end of 2025. He is also the author/arranger of a major work for concert bands entitled 52 Hymns and Chorales for Winds, published by Wingert-Jones Publications (a division of Excelcia Music Publishing).