Carlos Santana - A Tribute

Santana has a unique tone and guitar style. Although firmly rooted in Blues, he is known for his strong melodic lines, long feedback sustaining notes, and tremolo picked octaves and chromatics. Jamie Humphries

To tie in with our PRS Santana SE 2017 review and Tech Session, Jamie Humphries reveals the personal role played by the great Carlos Santana in his love of the guitar and the influence he has had on him and so many others.

I love the electric guitar; I love how one guitar can sound so completely different depending on who is playing it. There have been many guitarists with unique voices on the instrument. Brian May, Edward Van Halen, Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore, David Gilmour, The Edge - all of them have an instantly recognisable voice on the guitar. Another is Carlos Santana, whose guitar voice is as unique as his musical style. His vocal vowel-like guitar tone is the perfect voice for his hypnotic blend of Rock, Blues, Jazz and Latin American inspired rhythms.

I have a very deep and personal attachment to Carlos Santana's music and I have a great fondness of early Santana's catalogue, which played a large part in my life, his early music forming the backdrop of my early childhood. My father was a huge Santana fan, with a large collection of Santana albums that I would listen to with him. One of the first things I worked out on one string of a nylon strung acoustic guitar was the opening motif of Samba Pa Ti