Black Magic Woman – Santana (thanks to Peter Green)
The lyrics may not win any prizes, but this is a vehicle for instrumental music rather than a ‘song’ really.
Listening to different versions of this song by Santana and Fleetwood Mac will reveal just how much Santana was influenced by Green’s playing. You hear very similar phrases at very similar times in the song often.
Black Magic Woman is also a good way of showing how much can be done with blues progressions by adding in other sections and riffs.
Structure
This is a 12 bar chord progression which gives a blues feel, with a couple of extra bits for excuses to play lots of solos.
Strum Pattern
There are 4 beats to the bar.
We’ll upload a video of how to do the strum pattern soon, promise!
MAIN PATTERN
This strum pattern is in semiquavers and starts on beat 1.
Stroke: D U X U X U X U
Count: 1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a
Chords
Here we’ve shown some ‘extended’ chord shapes. The symbols above the lyrics just say Dm, but you can use a Dm7 to make a richer sound. The same goes for the Gm. If you want a simpler style then just use normal minor shapes. We’ll be looking at some other possibilities in the lessons.
Lyrics
== INTRO ==
4 bars Dm.
Then guitar solo over 12 bars of verse progression
Then keyboard solo for 8 bars over Dm
== VERSE 1 ==
|Dm 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |A7 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4
I got a black magic woman, I got a black magic woman I got a
|Dm 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |Gm 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4
black magic woman got me so blind I can't see I got a
|Dm 2 3 4 |A7 2 3 4 |Dm 2 3 4 |Dm sh sh sh
black magic woman she try'in to make a devil out of me Don’t turn your back on me ba-
== VERSE 2 ==
|Dm 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |A7 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4
-by, Don't turn your back on me ba-by Don’t turn your
|Dm 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |Gm 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4
back on me ba-by, Stop messin' round with your tricks Don’t turn your
|Dm 2 3 4 |A7 2 3 4 |Dm 2 3 4 |Dm sh sh sh
back on me ba-by, I might just pick up my magic sticks Got your spell on me ba-
== GUITAR SOLO FOR 2 VERSES finishing with the ‘Got your spell ..’ pickup ==
== VERSE 3 ==
|Dm 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |A7 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4
--by, got your spell on me ba---by Got your
|Dm 2 3 4 |1 2 3 4 |Gm 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4
spell on me ba--by, turnin my heart into stone I
|Dm 2 3 4 |A7 2 3 4 |Dm 2 3 4 |Dm sh sh sh
need you so bad, magic woman I can't leave you alone
== OUTRO - GO CRAZY OVER D7 with C5, B5, A5-D5 riff ==
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