Peter Frampton Talks Tone, Technique, and Tuning

Peter Frampton said that after he won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Album in 2007  he felt "validated." Many would find this comment an oddity considering Frampton's enormous success with his bands Herd and Humble Pie, and his gigantic hit album Frampton Comes Alive in 1976. However, years of side projects including the ill-fated film Sgt. peppers Lonely Hears Club Band, had taken him away from his talent as a serious guitarist and songwriter.

Hungry and energized with his Grammy win, Frampton chose to follow the album Fingerprints with the new hard-rocking Thank you Mr. Churchill, a very personal album full of amazing riffs, and some of his best guitar tones ever. "I wanted to reintroduce my singing on this album and do something completely different than Fingerprints, even though I did maintain a connection by including two instrumentals."

Frampton brings lots of beefy tones on the new album that produces a mixture of huge crunch and distortion sounds. "I got most of the sounds, especially the lead sounds, with one of two Marshall amps." Says Frampton; "I used a 70's Marshall that was modified by Jose Arredondo, the guy who modified Eddie Van Halen's amps, and a 1962 JTM-45." As if not having EVH's amp guy wasn't  enough, Frampton goes on to say, "I often just played straight through the amps, though sometimes I boosted the gain with either a Klon Centaur or Fulltone OCD pedals."

Several songs on the new album have a fat bluesy tone. "That's my Gibson 1960 Les Paul re-issue aged by Tom Murphy. I plugged straight into the JTM-45 and went for a Blues Breakers sound with an Eric Clapton sort of tone. I added a little more room ambience to get that 'everybody-playing-around one-microphone' old school blues sound."

Frampton's ability to extract tone is truly amazing and can be heard on the song "Restraint" which is a maniacal groove that uses altered tuning. With the first and sixth strings tuned down to D, Frampton is able to play normal fingerings while at the same time create an ominous tone. In addition, Frampton creates huge tones that captivate with just his Les Paul straight into his Marshall amp. "The only trick I used was that I would plug into the high-gain input [input 1] of the second channel which is the bassier one and then patch the other input from that channel of the high-gain input of the first or the more trebly channel. I'd just bring in a little of the brighter tone by turning that channel up to about one quarter, while adjusting the tone controls for the second channel. I believe that's the opposite of how most people did it."

Frampton is even more focused on his technique along with technical tricks. Frampton's deft talent to write huge riffs was significantly influenced by his former bandmate, Steve Marriott, of Humble Pie. "The riff! Steve taught me a lot about how to attack a note or a chord and also about how long to hold each note or chord an the space that you leave in between them." He continues by stating, "Steve was also a really good orchestrator of big guitar riffs. I would write big riffs too based on what he taught me, and then we would combine them into these enormous arrangements."

Another huge influence on Frampton is the great Django Reinhardt. "I think the way that Django used diminished runs, for example, is something that is visited on the current album as well as when I play live. Listening to Django all the time has influenced the way that I attack notes, which is a hugely important part of sound." Frampton concludes, "Django was an incredibly melodic player who could obviously play a string of notes from one end of the fretboard to the other in a half second, but also knock you out just by playing a single note across six chords changes. In other words, he didn't play fast all the time just because he could."

While most of us will never have the talent to play guitar like Frampton, we can learn from what he has to say. Whether it's plugging into a Marshall amp as Frampton explains above or using altered tunings, or perhaps, exploring the way you attack a riff, it's clear that even the best guitarists never stop experimenting. So take a page from a Frampton's playbook and then plug-in and experiment. Who knows, you may be very pleased with what you hear.