Description :
An electric guitar lesson on how to play the intro to “Samba Pa Ti†by Santana, from the “Abraxas†album released in 1970.This is such a beautiful and classic guitar instrumental. It paved the way for many instrumental rock guitar players like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai. I remember when it first came out, I was blown away by Carlos Santana’s melodic playing. He was the only guy that I can think of that was playing like that at the time. He played with such excellent dynamics and feel, something that a lot of “rock†guitar players just weren’t doing, yet he would throw in those blistering pentatonic rock licks as well.The piece starts out not too hard, but by the time you get into the end section, it starts to get a lot tougher. The hardest part for a lot of guys will be getting the bends right. The beginning sounds easy, but if your bends are off it will kill it pretty quickly! Also, attempting to play stuff like this with a lot of gain will make it impossible to play with any dynamics. It’s a pretty clean sound that he’s getting so there’s nowhere to hide on this one!Anyways, I hope you enjoy the lessons. I had a great time putting these videos together, it was a lot of fun as I’ve always really loved this tune.I get a lot of questions about my sound so here's what I'm using:My guitar is a 1975 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe. I have Suhr Aldrich pickups on it. I have them coil split, but for this video they were in full humbucker mode. For this tune I had my guitar on the neck pickup, and I had the wah pedal on the full treble position. I also used a detune setting of +8 -8. Other than some reverb, it was straight into the amp with a very low gain setting.My amp is an Egnater Renegade head. I am using a Two Notes Torpedo Live. It’s a load box and a speaker emulator so I’m not running the Marshall 1960b speaker cabinet anymore. It enables you to crank up your tube amp but use headphones, or just listen at low volume through your monitors, so I can be rocking out and getting a great sound without bothering people around me. So far I like it! I use a TC Electronics Nova System through the loop for effects. I also have a BB preamp which I essentially never use anymore, and sometimes (rarely) a Boss CS-3 compressor. The reverb is from the amp. My wah is a Dunlop MC404 CAE Dual Inductor, REALLY great pedal! I also use a Polytune tuner which is fantastic.
