Carlos Santana

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Carlos Santana

Advanced Level

The smoothest lead around

Welcome to the Carlos Santana Player Study! Santana has one of the most unique and recognizable guitar styles from the last 50 years. In this course, we look at how you can achieve that signature sound. For the lead playing, we use two custom riffs and solos based around two of his biggest hits to explain how he utilizes a range of cool techniques and licks. We also take an in-depth look at the Dorian scale as it plays a huge part in his style, both in the lead parts and in the rhythm parts. We also learn how to construct those Santana-style rhythm tracks by taking a closer look at the theory behind them and how to play those awesome Latin American style grooves.

He's Not Anywhere

To kick off our Santana course we will look at a pentatonic based solo. This solo is based on early Santana style solo's which were full of energy, attack, aggression, and of course, plenty of notes at crazy speeds!

The Dorian Mode

Carlos Santana is a big user user of the Dorian mode. In this course we will discuss firstly what the Dorian mode is, and then how to apply it to your lead playing in order to play like Santana!

Dorian Chords & Rhythm

We will now expand our Dorian knowledge even further by working out which chords work the best in Dorian chord progressions. We will be applying these chords to 3 awesome Santana grooves.

Oye Como What

In this final section we will take all of the new Dorian ideas and apply them to this extremely cool Santana solo! The solo is quick and moves up and down the fretboard from lick to lick.

Getting The Tone

Carlos Santana has one of the most iconic and recognisable guitar sounds out there, so how did he get it? We put together the guitars, amps and pedals that create the Santana tone.