Santeria Guitar Lesson – Sublime

In this Santeria guitar lesson series, I will demonstrate how to play all of this fun little Sublime classic note-for-note in it's entirety.

Released in 1996, "Santeria" became sort of an instant classic that still resonates with people to this day. A large part of it's success is due to guitarist/singer, the late Bradley Nowell's creative and catchy guitar rhythms and solos. You can tell that he was a very accomplished guitar player that really new his way around the fretboard.

In the first video of this Santeria guitar lesson series, I will demonstrate how to play all the chords and progressions found in this now classic song. The rhythm is very reggae influenced throughout the verse section, so I will demonstrate how to accomplish this quick mute effect. Within this rhythm you will also need to play a lot of bar chords, so try to keep your left hand relaxed since those bar chords are used through just about the entire song. It can be a bit tiring if you aren't using the proper technique.

For the chorus I will demonstrate how to combine the two guitar layers on the original recording into a relatively easy to play guitar part that can be done by just one guitar player. Bradley Nowell played this part different each time with just slight variations so I recommend that you do it that way as well.

In the second video guitar lesson, I will show you note-for-note how to play Bradley Nowell's killer guitar solo to this now classic song.

This solo if full of highly musical yet tricky guitar licks. You will need to dial in a nice clean guitar tone and tune your guitar to standard to follow along.

I will go through the solo phrase-by-phrase after my initial full performance. I suggest learning these phrases individually before attempting to put them together into one cohesive musical statement.

It starts with Bradley Nowell playing some ascending slide licks into some melodic bends. The groove of this lick and the rest of that solo for that matter is very important. You have to really feel that groove to place all the notes correctly.

After that opening phrase, Bradley Nowell launches into a fast series of licks that incorporate a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs. Each one of them can make for a great repetitive technique exercise, especially the fast ascending chromatic licks.

The solo then moves up into the 9th position for a fast and bluesy pentatonic sequence with a some melodic double-stops closing out the solo.

All of this makes for a great challenge and if you can put it all together it should make for a nice accomplishment for most players. Have Fun!

Carl...

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Santeria Guitar Lesson - Chords/Rhythms

Santeria Guitar Lesson - Solo