An evening with Frank Gambale

[ForeverAutumn]

On this day of trick or treats, I had a real treat last night. A local music store held a performance clinic with Frank Gambale. I’m not a big fan of jazz fusion, but if shredding is your thing, Gambale is the king.

Although, I had to laugh...he started the evening by playing a nice accoustic jazz piece from his newest CD. It was a very informal evening built around Q&A. One of the audience members asked him whether he would pull out his electric guitar and shred. His response was, "I can shred, but is it musical?"

In the hour and a half that he was on stage, he talked…a lot. In fact he spent more time talking than playing. But that was fine with me. As a novice guitar player it was a real eye-opener for me to listen to someone of Gambale’s technical skill talk about and demonstrate his practice techniques.

He spent a lot of time talking about what he called “Gambale tuning”. From what I understood of this (a lot of what he talked about was over my head) he uses different strings on a guitar so that he can tune the 1st and 6th strings in A, with the bottom two strings tuned an octave lower than the top four. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a guitar with this tuning with him, but he had recorded samples of him just improvising and fooling around with this tuning on his Mac, which he was happy to play for us. So we got a little taste not only of this tuning, but of his private recordings. It was very, very cool.

Watching him play is an experience that I won’t soon forget. I had read about his technique of sweeping, but I didn’t really understand it until I saw him play last night. His left hand moves at lightning speed while his right hand sweeps the strings and looks like a slow lazy strum. But the sounds that come out are anything but slow and lazy!

After last night’s clinic, I have a whole new appreciation for his technique and talent. It was a great learning experience from a master guitar player. I know that there are lots of guitarists around here. If you ever have the opportunity to see Gambale play, take it. Even if you don’t like his style, just watching him will make your jaw drop in awe.

[BradH]

His "sweeping" technique always amazed me. It doesn't even seem possible. He's not the only one that's done it but he's probably the best at it and he's made it his trademark. I would've love to have seen that.

Lucky you!

[bobsticks]

Frank Gambale: the even-worse-haired, Lite version of Yngwie Malmsteen...massive chops though.

Lemme know when you got them 64th note legato runs down, Fall Girl.

[ForeverAutumn]

Frank Gambale: the even-worse-haired, Lite version of Yngwie Malmsteen...massive chops though.

Lemme know when you got them 64th note legato runs down, Fall Girl.

He was bald!