Guitar Tricks Insider August/September Issue | Page 46

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