How to Play Santeria by Sublime

A visual guide by Ben Sagers

Table of Contents

Getting Started

Learn the names of the strings

Your fingers have numbers

What is a fret?

The Chords

How to play a bar chord Verse Chorus

The Solo

What is a hammer on?

What is a bend?

What is a slide?

What are tabs?

How to play the solo

Getting Started

Learn the Names of the Strings

Guitars have 6 strings. Each of these strings have names. From top to bottom, they are e, a, d, g, b, and e. Get familiar with these string names, it will make your life a lot easier when learning new music.

E A D G B e

It’s important to note that these string names are just placeholders. EADGBE is what we call “standard tuning”. Most guitar songs are written in this tuning. The awesome thing about guitars is the fact that there are tons of different ways to tune your strings depending on what sound you are going for. Lucky for you, Santeria is played in standard tuning, so we can keep things simple.

Your Fingers Have Numbers

Now that we’ve assigned names to the guitar strings, We can assign numbers to your fingers. This makes learning the guitar so much easier for people that have no idea what they are doing.

Traditionally you don’t use your thumb to play any chords, so the thumb doesn’t get a number. The rest of the fingers will be numbered 1-4, from pointer to pinky.

What is a Fret?

the frets on a guitar are the little rectangles that run all along the neck. if you hold your finger down on one of the frets and pluck the string, your guitar will play a different note. This allows you to play pretty much anything.

It’s important to remember to press the fret as close to the edge of the fret as you can. This will make sure that you get the best sound possible.

put your finger here

The Chords

How to play Bar Chords

Bar chords aren’t necessary to play Santeria, but if you want to sound like the recording, they are required. To keep it as simple as possible, there are 2 main types of chords on the guitar. You have open chords, and bar chords. The open chords are C, G, D, A, and E. They are the easiest chords to play. Once you have those down, the bar chords come a lot easier. You see, the bar chords use those 5 open chord shapes. they allow you to play chords all over the neck of the guitar. Being able to do that is a great skill to have, because you will be able to play pretty much any song. In order to play a bar chord, you use your first finger to put a “bar” over the fret you are basing the chord around. then, you use your remaining fingers to fret the chord shape.

The Solo

What is a Hammer-on?

The hammer-on is a slightly more advanced technique, but i think you can handle it. It is a skill used to make your guitar solos sound spicy. In order to pull this off, you are going to need 2 things. a finger, and a second finger. you fret your note of choice, and pluck the string. Then, you take your next finger and put it on a fret that is higer on the neck. This will change the note that you just played, and it gives a really neat effect. Another crucial piece of the hammer on is called a “pull off”. While the note that you hammered on is still ringing out, pull your finger off the string while also plucking the string. It’s a good way to transition between the original note and the note you hammer on/off.

What is a Bend?

The bend is quite similar to the hammer-on. It is used to make a quick transition from one note to another one. The reason why the bend is useful is because it allows you to smoothly transition from one note, to another, and then back to the first note in one fell swoop. To accomplish this, you fret the note and then use that same finger to bend the string. The note will change depending on how far you bend the string.

What is a Slide?

The slide is almost a hybrid of the hammer-on and the bend. The three can be used to do the same thing, but they each have their own distinct feel so it really depends on what you’re going for. To pull off the slide, you start by fretting your note of choice. Instead of hammering on with another finger or bending the string, you slide that same finger up to the next note. It is a very useful skill. Slide

What are tabs?

Tabs are very important for beginning guitarists. We use tabs as an easy way to notate guitar riffs and solos. Traditionally, music would be notated with sheet music. While it’s possible to read traditional sheet music while playing guitar, tabs are a lot easier to understand and visualize. When you look at tabs, you’ll notice that there are 6 lines. Those represent the 6 guitar strings. You’ll also notice little numbers on the strings. Those numbers tell you what frets you need to press and what strings to strum. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature.

When you look at the tabs, you will see the lowercase “e” on the top line. That represents the high “e” string on your guitar. We set it up this way so that when you look down on your guitar, the high “e” is the top string. That way, you don’t get all turned upside down.

Here’s a couple last minute tips to help you read the tab. There are a couple different symbols used to signify the different techniques we just talked about. / - Slide up \ - Slide down h - hammer on p - pull off b - bend