COVER STORY
SANTANA
SPEAKS
pt. 2
I work with them to put two or three
different microphones in different places:
one on the speaker, one in the room, and
one in the back. So you get the whole
picture, because as you can tell, that’s what
the ear picks up. The ear doesn’t just pick
up – like I told you the river. You pick up the
whole thing. So we are constantly training
people to listen to the whole thing. When I
hit the sustain note, the note is equivalent
to a grape. When I squeeze that note and it
squirts and it gets you wet – that’s what I
want. I don’t want the grape - you squeeze it
and nothing comes out. So I want to be able
to get you wet with my emotion. And the
only way to do it is to create a thing with the
engineer that gets them wet. Okay, certain
notes I do 4 to 7 notes on the 7th note, I
want it to jump out of the speakers and you
just goose it a little bit and go back. This
is what Jimi did. This is what Clapton did.
This is what Jeff Beck did in the beginning –
before all the engineers that you have. You
cheat a little bit. You goose it up a little bit.
In the mix.
In the mix. So your voice is all of a sudden
like, “uh, uh, uh, AHHHH!” You get that
spillover and then duck it back up again.
46
DIGITAL EDITION
And the people say, “Whoa. That note got
me. Why didn’t the other note get me?”
Because you goosed that one a little bit.
Because that’s what I did when I did it. So
it goes to spiritual and physical and you try
to duplicate, sound-wise, what you did in the
first place. Does that make sense?
Is there anything else for preparation?
I practice scales and I practice non-scales.
Which is one-two-three, get inside the
note. One-two-three, play one note that
when you vibrate, it sounds like somebody
holding you and moaning. Sometimes when
a person moans – knows how to moan – it’s
like a universal song. You don’t have to hear
lyrics in Japanese, or Italian, or English, or
anything. By the way John Lee Hooker moans
– you know exactly what he’s saying. I
practice not to articulate the notes do-re-mifa-so-la-ti-do. I practice to articulate human
emotion. Maybe I think of Aretha. Maybe I
think of Dionne Warwick in a certain phrase.
So I practice the last note. That’s the note
that I practice. I forget the other notes and I
get to the punchline, if you will. How I deliver
the punchline, so whether you’re playing
blues or reggae or whatever you are playing,
they say, “Man. That note.” ■
AUG/SEPT