Carlos Santana: “The Best Way to Rehearse”

Finding the Essence of a Song

Jun 03, 2025

In 1988 Carlos Santana reassembled the original late-1960s Santana band to tour in support of a three-LP career retrospective called Viva Santana. It had been nearly two decades since Carlos, keyboardist Gregg Rolie, drummer Michael Shrieve, and percussionist Chepito Areas had played together. After two weeks of intensive rehearsals, Carlos called me on his last day home before the tour and offered to share his views on how musicians can make the best use of rehearsal time. Here’s that August 24, 1988, conversation.

How can musicians make the most of rehearsal time?

I think people spend a lot of wasted time on getting sounds together. When people rehearse, they should do it with a plain, simple keyboard, one guitar, one conga, and just learn the songs. I tell people—and I don’t care who they are—that it’s important for them to spend more time knowing the changes, where the breaks are, the transitions. When they go home, they can learn to MIDI and enhance their sound. But the best way to utilize rehearsal time is to memorize dynamics, intensity, nuances, and things like that. For rehearsals, that’s definitely where I like to spend the time. I like to make sure people know these in their dreams, so it becomes a very natural extension of transitions.

A lot of times people work for hours on their sound—you know, that stuff is never-ending anyway. They MIDI to this, they do that, and then when you tell them to play, they don’t know the song. You have to stop because they don’t know the song. To me, the best thing about rehearsal, again, is to learn the song. Later, go home and get your sound together. The most important thing to learn in rehearsal is the essence of the song.

How do you show them songs?

To me, the song primarily is the groove, which is the heart. If you have an incredible groove, who cares about the intro and the bridge and the end and the verses and the chorus? That’s what I like the best about Talking Heads’ Remain in Light. Those songs don’t sound like songs; they sound like straight-ahead grooves.

With so many instruments, do you have an arranger for the band?

No. I basically arrange. For new songs, I try to arrange and break it down so that people don’t get too much cholesterol from either melody or rhythm. I try to balance it out, so that there’s valleys and there’s mountains, so it’s not too intense or frenetic. It’s like making love. There’s got to be tension and release, tension and release.

What percent of rehearsal time should be spent actually playing music?

From the morning when you walk in until you leave. I feel like a fish in water, man, when the music is right, and that’s what I try to go for in rehearsals. It kills me when people have to stop the groove a lot. So the main thing I teach people is the groove— “This is how it goes.” Let me hear what the drummer and bass player are doing, and then I bring in the congas.

Sometimes people can be a little bit too clever for you. They’ll just disguise what they don’t know by just playing a lot. I say, “No, no, no. When I want you to play, really play it. But what I want you to really do is hold the groove.” Wayne Shorter and I were talking about this. We want to lay a groove down so Wynton Marsalis to the guy with the green mohawk hair can get off behind it, because then you will hit everything in between. To me, again, the most important thing is the groove.

How long is your typical rehearsal?

Usually from 1:00 to like 6:00 or 8:00.

Will you take breaks?

Yeah. We take breaks to go eat and to discuss how things feel to people. Whether somebody needs coaching or if they need to know the breakdown on the song, how come the song works like this—that kind of stuff. We can just discuss it. I like to rehearse the band from eight to twelve days. Then when we go onstage, we can just walk through it, even if the monitors suck or whatever. See, as soon as you leave your house, you’re at the mercy of all kinds of things. So I don’t like to over-rehearse, but I like to rehearse enough so that everybody feels totally free and natural, and then we can improvise. I always give the analogy that to rehearse is to know the corner, so you can always get home right. Once you know how to get home right, then you can take another route, but first you gotta know how to get home.

Do you typically update songs during rehearsals?

Yeah. A lot of songs we have to. There’s different musicians, and everybody plays the chords differently. Nobody plays a shuffle or even just a straight-ahead Jimmy Reed riff the same. The only people who play the way Jimmy Reed played it is Jimmy Reed and Phillip Upchurch. The rest of us, we try to take some essence from it, but we’re not going to play exactly like it. Ain’t no way.

Do your rehearsals typically follow the pattern of the show?

No, because rehearsal is only a schematic. A rehearsal is a column of vertebrae. Once you get it, then you put the spirit on it. I try to put the spirit anywhere—rehearsals and everything. To me, the most beautiful thing about rehearsing and going onstage is when I catch myself and the other guys in the band literally drooling. You know, when they get into the solo, you look up and those people have gobs of saliva flowing from their mouth. You go, “Yeah! Yeah!” They’re so blissed out or they’re so opiated with their own thing. They know the rehearsal was good for them, because if they get lost, it’s a good way to get lost—not in confusion, but imbued with the spirit. Sometimes confusion is okay, like Jimi Hendrix could create confusion, or the Doors, but people don’t freak out like that too much.

What’s the best attitude for a musician who has just joined the band to bring to a rehearsal?

His best attitude is to know that music should always be boiling, like boiling water. Whether it’s soft or loud or fast or slow, it should always be intense. A lot of people play half-hearted when they play softly. They should never do that, because the spirit of the song goes out. The main thing to know is to not lose that intensity, and also to learn to project—not loud volume, but to project.

Is it important to work with people you get along with?

Umm… Yeah. I’m professional enough that I can work with people that I don’t get along with, but music, as you know, first and foremost is harmony. After a while if you only work with a person onstage—and offstage you can’t stand his guts—there’s no point, because all that stuff is going to come out onstage also. You know, [Cuban percussionist] Armando Peraza is an incredible professional person. I know he can play with anybody, even people who hate each other’s guts, because he can go and complement the music. I’m not that good. I can’t play poker. I can’t play cards, because my face tells you what I got. Some people are very good at masking their feelings. I’m not that way, so for me it would best to work with people who have some kind of respect for everybody in the band. Whether I’m onstage or offstage, I just don’t want to be a psychiatrist or a cop or a nurse or a babysitter for anybody. I would like to feel that people who can play the music can get along in the restaurant too, and still complement life. Because that’s what music is above all—it’s to complement life.

How is the chemistry between you and your old bandmates?

It feels good because now after 20 years, Gregg Rolie went and did everything that I believe he needed to do on his own. And Michael Shrieve. I kept it going, and there’s a lot of mutual respect and admiration. They don’t have to fight me like they used to fight me to be in charge of the band. I usually don’t impose authority on anybody. I like to feel that I’m trying to create the best possible setting so that every musician can express himself and bring the best out of the music and other musicians. I went to Jamaica earlier this year and played with all of those great people in Kingston. One guy came out and said, “Hey, man, I want you to listen to the baddest guitar player on the island.” Really. So the first thing I said was, “Hey, man, do you know why the Lord created the world round?” He goes, “Why?” I said, “So we can all have center stage.” That obliterates all that.

I feel like that. I don’t like to impose being the boss on anybody. But at the same time I feel like I have a little more vision than a lot of people, and a little bit more access to imagination world. I trip out more than a lot of people do because my world now is filled with imagination. I believe that that’s where you go when you close your eyes. You go into that world of imagination and you bring that sound here.

So I believe now that Gregg and Michael are comfortable with me, and whenever they want to say something, I’m not going to stop them or block them. I’ll say yea or nay, according to where they are. I go by people’s eyes. I’ll say, “That’s a good idea. Yeah, you’re right. Let’s do it that way.” Or if I feel that they’re not really doing it, then I’ll say, “Well, let’s think about that overnight” or “Let’s play it and let’s see what it tells us.” So it feels really good to work with these musicians because now we have a better communication with each other. Now it’s not a do-or-die feel like it used to be when we were kids. When we were younger, everything was do-or-die. It was too much tension and pressure. It’s not like that any more. We can laugh at ourselves now.

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Talking Guitar ★ Jas Obrecht's Music Magazine

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