Steve
Pappas is a
Northeast Ohio-based finger style/classical guitarist with over 30
years of experience. He graduated from the Dana School of Music
(Youngstown State University) in 1986 with a Bachelor of Music
Education degree with an emphasis in guitar. For the past 28 years
he has been employed as a music specialist in the Youngstown City
Schools. He is also the co-owner of the Liberty Lesson Center and it
is there that he maintains his private studio.
Presently, he
performs in String Theory, a guitar duo with multi-instrumentalist
Tony Valenzisi. They perform approximately 25 times a year
throughout Northeastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.
You can find additional arrangements from Steve on his
website.
If you're new to guitar in
general or if you can play a mean guitar with a pick and want to
explore fingerstyle guitar, the tunes in this section are selected to
help you reach your goals. If you're a fingerstyle guitar
instructor, you may want to consider this material for your students,
since many of these arrangements were specifically used for this
purpose.
These tunes are ideal for
those just getting started in fingerstyle guitar and provide simpler
material that will allow you to develop the requisite skill of playing
bass and melody together. They'll also allow you to get
comfortable with playing the very common 'Travis style' alternating
bass. You can also use this material to get comfortable
with some of the syncopation techniques between the bass and melody
lines common in fingerstyle guitar. These songs don't extend
much, if at all, beyond the first 4 - 5 frets of the guitar so that
you don't have to have a strong knowledge of the entire fretboard to
be able to play them. If you are very new to guitar, the easiest
are "Andy Pandy", "I Saw Three Ships", and
"Go Tell Aunt Rhody". Once you have those down, try
some of the others.
NOTE:
Don't let the "Easy" designation dissuade you, these are
some great tunes and you'll find some will be challenging. So
give them a try and have fun with them. They're all a pleasure
to play.
