The Smooth Guitar Playing of Santana

Santana was one of my earliest musical influences. I was exposed to his music during a visit at my Dad's apartment as a kid when I was first learning to play guitar. His emotion-filled melodic guitar solos helped me to develop my own style and pushed me to explore the role of scales in music. 

Carlos Santana (born 1947) is a Mexican/American rock guitar legend who became famous in the late '60s and early '70s with his band, Santana, which pioneered rock, Latin music and jazz fusion. The band's sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against rich, driving Latin and African rhythms, featuring percussion instruments not generally heard in rock music. The heavily percussive instrumentation with keyboard rich harmonic textures was Santana's trade-mark and he continued to work in these forms over the following decades. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s and is still actively putting out albums and touring today. 

Popular Santana Tunes

Santana had a whole string of well-known songs that still gets airplay. Some of the popular tunes from Santana's huge catalog of music were:

"Black Magic Woman"
"Evil Ways"
"Oye Como Va"
"Europa"
"Soul Sacrafice"
"Smooth"

The great thing about Santana's music is that it crosses over different genres, cultures and has had wide acceptance among audiences in different age groups as well.

Santana's Guitar Style

Santana's playing style draws heavily from the scale modes (Aeolian, Ionian, Dorian & Mixolydian) and the Harmonic Minor scale mixed heavily with the Blues scale, giving his solos a rock edge with a Latino blend. His effects used are mostly smoothly overdriven tone, reverb and some wah-wah. 



Any guitar player would benefit learning some of the melodic phrasing used by Santana.

Jimmy