Frank Gambale is one of the most distinctive guitar players on the secne. He sounds like a happy hybrid of a jazz player's love of harmonic lines, a metal player's love of arpeggios and a full singing legato tone, as if George Benson, Malmsteen and Holdworth collaborated on a single solo.
The technique book looks at the way Gambale solos chordal harmonies. The method is structured around six basic chordal types (minor 7, maj 7, dom 7, altered dom 7, min 7 flat 5, and diminished) approached five ways:
- By Diatonic Scales (Selected based on the tonality required)
- Pentatonic/Blues Scales
- Four-note arpeggios
- Triads (Both as notes and chordal fragments)
- Two-notes intervals.
The technique book is a method for examining what all these possibilities sound like over a given chord. Gambale provides all the options and then tells you what his preferred sounds are in context. It ends up that what Frank plays are moving harmonic progressions superimposed over more or less static chords or vamps. The melodically phrased progressions selected give his solo lines harmonic interest and internally generated movement (in contrast to the usually single modal approach used by the average rock player).