Posted on 01/23/2015 7:09:15 PM PST by rdb3
I was listening to Carlos Santana's "Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile)" and it made me wonder how in the world did he do those two looooong sustains or bends in this piece? Was this an amp trick or something that can be done only in the studio? I mean, 4 second sustains are amazing. How did he do it?
Jesus Christ: You can’t impeach Him and He ain’t gonna resign.
Hi gain amplification. Tube saturation. It’s magical.
Not really amazing at all. If you play electric guitar you’d know that. Pretty routine actually.
Check out Frank Zappa, Al Demiola, Jeff Beck, Steve Vie among many other greats.
BTW, Carlos Santana couldn’t hold any of their picks. Carlos is just Ok at best compared.
One of those effects pedals...and he put the pedal to the metal.
Held the note, kicked on a compressor, and maybe a little slow digital delay.
Had an MXR compressor many years ago that would give you screaming sustain if you let it feedback... coupled it with an EC100 analog (tape) echo, and it was... awesome.
Don’t know if that’s what Carlos is using, but I’d bet something similar.
He sold his soul to the Devil.
feedback
Real amps glow in the dark.
Or Che, take your pick.
Just the right amount of audio feedback from the amplifier back to the guitar. If you do it right, it doesn’t squeal or shriek, it just keeps your note going, as long as you want.
Oh and BTW, if you’re good at it, by subtly changing how you position the guitar relative to the amplifier, you can alter the relative amplitude of the various harmonics, and get the note to shift up one or even two octaves, and come back down. It’s a gorgeous effect, and doesn’t require any electronics other than lots of gain, although overdrive can be helpful in smoothing out the transitions.
Paul Reed Smith guitars.
Santana uses them.
Probably lots of compression too.
I use a simple Maxon compression in front of all my pedals and it makes my Strat sustain way longer than it can by itself.
Lots of compression from either a fuzz box or onboard amplifier distortion. Pretty easy to get his basic tone but what’s hard to copy are his pitch perfect bends and dead on sense of phrasing and timing. He’s one of the few guys who doesn’t hide behind vibrato when he bends but instead just nails the note and stays there. There are a lot of players who are more technical than Carlos Santana but few who are as musical, especially in his early years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVI7ZDDQXKA
I saw Santana on the Moonflower tour back in seventy-something. I’ll never forget it. He held the that note for so long it hurt.
He held that note longer tan he did iron the album, so it wasn’t a studio trick. Probably a combination of a high-gain tube amp and a compressor cranked all the way up…just a guess.
“I’ll be Waiting” was the highlight of the show, for me. After that “She’s not there”.
Adding to the above ^ the pickups in the guitar and the type wood dont hurt either. He plays PRS guitars which are made of top grade materials and typically uses the neck pickup for that tone and almost always plays in the pentatonic scale. He uses a Mesa Boogie amp cranked with a boost pedal. For that type tone a tubescreamer pedal with a little delay will do the job. It’s not hard to get that tone really.
Boogie amp + fat sounding pickups + volume + standing in the right spot near the amp to control the feedback. Probably effects also ... but Carlos could make the basic sound happen with just those ingredients.
The disinformation is flowing already in some cases.
But the posters citing (vacuum) tube saturation are correct. Combined with proper technique e.g. finger vibrato, long sustains with a ‘hot’ amp are hardly a chore.
Santana, like many iconic guitarists, is a bit of a purist therefore his emphasis is on the amplifier rather than a load of effects. As someone once pointed out, if you want tube saturation and an all-analog sound, why are you running your signal through a solid-state germanium transistor-based pedal?
Mesa/Boogie is a well-known name...the first Boogies were hot-rodded Fender Princetons and one of the early adopters was...Carlos Santana, who also used subsequent original-design Boogie models.
There there is the Dumble Overdrive, a Holy Grail-type of amplifier made by hand by its eponymous inventor and only when he feels like it. No two alike etc. Tens of thousands of dollars.
I saw Santana on the Moonflower tour back in seventy-something. I’ll never forget it. He held the that note for so long it hurt.
He held that note longer tan he did iron the album, so it wasn’t a studio trick. Probably a combination of a high-gain tube amp and a compressor cranked all the way up…just a guess.
“I’ll be Waiting” was the highlight of the show, for me. After that “She’s not there”.
4 second sustain? Just turn up the amp. Once your strings start to vibrate sympathetically in sync with the amp, you can hold the sustain forever. It’s a controlled feedback.
I saw Carlos do it in San Diego back in 1969. It was feedback controlled by his guitar gain knob.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.