Search - Guitar Method: In the Style of Santana on DVD

Not perfect, but not bad for $16

Christopher M. Reed | 12/04/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"No one dvd could completely cover Santana. You could probably devote at least one or maybe even two dvds to each of santana's songs. If you want to become as great as santana, you need to listen to each of his songs a million times, as well as those of the great blues artists that inspired him; such as BB King and Peter Green. It will also take many years of constant practice. If you want a good shortcut, or even merely a headstart, this dvd will give you some good lines from his most popular songs and will give you enought to impress some of your latin friends. The only negative i have is that there is no written tab included (I still give it 5 stars). In the video portion, Curt goes through each riff with a close up so you can see his fret hand, there is no tab, but you can see how he plays each riff. He goes through each riff twice; once at normal speed and once a little slower. There is also a tab viewer which scrolls through the tab of each riff as you hear the notes being plaeyed. This also goes through each riff twice. Play along with the tab viewer until you get the riffs pretty much down. Then try to play along with curt in the video portion. This will help you make sure your fingering is correct and will help you memorize the riffs. Just play the riffs together and you will get a decent resemblance to carlos's songs. If you want to truly play the songs exactly like carlos does, you will have to search through past guitar mags for accurate transcriptions and then listen to some of his recordings and practice, practice, practice, then practice some more. Also be warned that over the many years that carlos has played he has recorded several versions of his songs and there have been some minor changes in the way he has played them over the years. My advice is to use this dvd to help you develope your own blues style and rythm. As far as carlos's amps and effects he pretty much exclusively uses two custom made paul reed smith guitars, a mesa boogie Mark I amp, he also uses a tube screamer peddle, an ibanez modulation delay and a mu-tron wah. I have not yet tried any other In the Style of CDs."