If anyone wants to try the picks mentioned in the interview I’ll be more than happy to give some of mine away. Ordered a pack; only to find out after thirty seconds of use, that they’re really not for me…
I was rewatching the Frank interview and I think it’s my favourite. Frank is great to listen to and he is very soft and calmly spoken. His technique is a joy to watch and it looks like his pick isn’t even touching the strings. He has one of the most efficient techniques I have seen on the interviews so far. He’s my favourite sweep picker for sure.
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So, we cleared how frank moves his pick but no clue about how he thinks the musical stuff…very clever.
The two are very likely connected. Frank has released a million lessons on harmony, modes etc., or even just by studying the examples in the interview you can get many clues
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Yes, name one lesson where the method is clearly explained, without guessing or supossing things…
Maybe seeing Yngwie you dont need this cracking the code thingy.
He recently released a lesson (not for free) called “target tones”, where he discusses some of his ideas about chord changes (see link below) - I am actually on the fence with that one.
Even in his old “speed picking” book he explained how he would look for sweepable phrases inside the standard scale shapes (providing examples), and this is at least one of his possible ways to construct licks. But really I think the issue is that he uses a ton of different ideas, even though they all tend to revolve around his mechanics.
In general it would probably be impossible to condense his 40+ years of improvisational experience in a 1h interview.
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I think the Improv Made Easier book is less typical of Gambale’s approach to improv than the system he lays out in the Frank Gambale Technique Book 1+2. The “Improv” book is entirely modal, whereas the “Technique” book gives numerous options over different chord qualities. For example, over the Minor 7 chord (the “II” in the II-V-I) Frank might play:
- The Dorian Mode (Dm7 = D Dorian)
- 3 Minor Pentatonic Scales: Starting on Root, Maj 2 up, or 5th up. (Dm7 = Dm / Em / Am Pent.)
- All diatonic Arpeggios from the relative major (Dm7 = Arps from Key of C major)
- Triad Groups / Implied Slash Chords (Dm7 = C + F + G major Triads)
- Intervals in 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths from Dorian
- Chromatic Passing Tones that lead to Target notes in the chord
All this stuff is mapped out in the Technique Books, you should check them out if you’re interested in his approach!
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You are right, and the improvising made easier examples seems a bit…composed.
But, still, theres no single example on how he thniks, like the joe pass example mentioned earlier, the method in practice to construct something similar.
Did Frank Gambale have an album he recorded with two other shred type guitarists, or is that Shawn Lane I’m thinking of? Or maybe Shawn was one of the two guitarists Gambale recorded with for that record. Does anyone here know which record I’m thinking if and what the name of it is?
I’d imagine that what he has to offer in his school is pretty different from what CTC’s MIM has to offer. If it weren’t much different, I’m not sure he would have done an interview of this type for MIM, since it would basically be like helping his competition.
As it is, I think Troy and Frank Gambale are helping each other promote their own particular products as opposed to competing with each other.
Maybe @Troy would want to expound in this, but MIM is pretty different from a typical music school. MIM is educational, like a school, but the primary focus is on the mechanics involved in making the music, rather than on the music itself. That’s why the magnet camera is so integral to MIM interviews.
Troy, if a time came when you thought MIM had covered mechanics as completely as was necessary, would your primary focus with CTC shift to offering other types of interviews besides Masters In Mechanics, or do you think there will always be enough new things worthwhile for MIM to explore about the mechanics of picking to keep your focus on explaining mechanics?
Yes it was with Shawn Lane and Brett Garsed and called Centrifugal Force. Very good album with lots of high tech guitar.
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Try googling Frank Gambale Shawn Lane; in addition to more info on this collaboration you should find a familiar site in the top few results 
Yep, for sure! There’s so much material and different angles / approaches to musical learning that we always try to think in terms of collaboration rather than competition with the people we work with, many of whom offer their own courses, downloads, lessons, etc.
Mechanics is definitely at the core of what we do, and what put us on the map, but we are interested in other topics too. I think there’s a sort of “Cracking the Code approach”, characterized by e.g. technical analysis and demystifying complex ideas, that we might apply to other areas if/when we think there’s something new we can add. We’ve done a few not-strictly-mechanical conversations already like talking performance/practice with Noa Kageyama, or playing through the changes with Martin Miller…not sure what next but I think it’s a good bet we’ll explore more stuff like this in the future!
Nice answers @Brendan. Very informative! I understand what you mean by the “Cracking The Code Approach” and your explanation of it even adds more insight into the CTC style.
I asked this because it would seem to me that whether it’s 2 years or 5 years from now, you’re going to get to the point where you’ve explained the mechanics of picking so thoroughly that you could get to the point to where you and the CTC team think: We may have reached a point of diminishing returns where the amount of work involved searching for every possible variation of alternate picking styles isn’t justified by the relatively small benefit to be had.
A time will come when you’ve covered the different mechanics of involved in picking so throughly that unless someone comes along who has a technique that allows him to do things nobody else can, or more easily than other techniques of picking allow, it may be that your customers will feel that you’ve already explained everything about the mechanics of alternate picking in more than sufficient detail.
I don’t know when that time will come, but you’ll probably know when and if that time comes if your customers start giving you feedback which indicates you’ve explained picking so thoroughly that they don’t have any substantial questions left regarding explanation of the mechanics behind the different styles in which fast, accurate picking is accomplished and what are the quickest, best ways to learn to incorporate these mechanics into their guitar playing.
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I was rewatching the FG interview and it inspired me to try some economy picking. I have no problems in ascending but my problem lies in descending.
How does Frank get almost no noise and such a smooth pick attack when doing descending sweeps? My attack is quite noisy and there is a lot of pick scraping noise, however there isn’t much on ascending sweeps.
When Frank plays those sweeping lines they sound almost synth like because of how smooth his attack is. How is he doing it?
If you want to do exactly what he does, I’d try to reproduce everything he’s doing, just to eliminate varaibles. This means arm setup, anchoring, grip style (trigger), exposure, edge picking, and pick choice. Frank has always played 346-design picks, which will have more sliding when played on edge. In our interview, he uses the Planet Waves 1mm heavy of that design.
No matter what pick or approach you choose, if the scratchyness is not the same when you playing downstrokes and upstrokes, then something your form is not symmetrical. Note that Frank uses grip pressing / wrapping with the thumb to make sure the pick attack is identical no matter which way he’s going. This is why he says his technique looks “round” when he looks at it. He points out specifically that he’s not talking about the picking motion, per se, just the thumb adjustments that he makes to equalize the attack.
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Thanks, Troy. I will have a look at the video again over the weekend and try to copy some of his physical set up and see if it feels anyway natural or comfortable.
I had no idea about making things symmetrical, that’s very interesting that you point that out and certainly gives me something else to look at.
Kinda blurry and dark, but it’s worth watching… for the music of course! Really tasteful stuff to my ears at least.
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S**t hot playing, especially in that second clip, which is one my favorite styles of “Frank”. The eighth-note time is super in the pocket, and whatever rushing you get from the sweeping, which I know sometimes people complain about, in this case just adds energy because you’re only using it for the higher subdivisions. That’s working with the tools rather than against them.
And of course, the harmonic knowledge. Tasty, tasty stuff.
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Short of creating a whole new topic, just want to say that I’m enjoying Frank’s rhythm guitar course which was just released. Cheers, D
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“And nobody likes to be in a cage. Not for too long, anyhow.”
…Frank Gambale in Spicing Up The Blues, demonstrating diagonal, two string pentatonic shapes from the outset.
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