BONUS LESSON: Santana - Black Magic Woman
Lesson time: (3min 16sec)
Ron Sayer plays Santana's 'Black Magic Woman' on guitar, showing how its chords give you room to lay the course's scale ideas on top.
Course preview
This lesson is part of the course Thinking Out Of The Box 2: And Out You Go!
Watch a preview of the full course below.
Lesson transcript:
Music Lesson with Ron Sayre
Hi, I'm Ron Sayre, coming to you from musicgurus.com.
I've just finished recording a couple of courses on how to make your blues and pentatonic playing infinitely more interesting, and I thought I'd pop over to YouTube and demonstrate a couple of those ideas. Hopefully, you'll like them, and you can come and check our courses out at musicgurus.com.
Chords and Scales
To start off with, I'm going to play you Black Magic Woman by Santana, which has some interesting chords that you can throw some nice scales over the top of.
Key Points to Know:
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Key: D Minor
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G Major Arpeggio:
- The notes of the G major 7th arpeggio can be incorporated over the D minor chord in Black Magic Woman.
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A Dominant Seventh Chord:
- When you get to the A chord, which is the dominant seventh chord (or the altered chord), you can play a diminished seventh arpeggio.
Playing Tips
- You can choose to play the diminished seventh arpeggio from the E downwards, or anywhere you prefer during your progression.
Now, I'm going to demonstrate how these ideas work over the progression.
Performance
So, here we go! I'm going to play Black Magic Woman for you. Hope you enjoy it!
1, 2, 3...
Thanks for watching! I hope you enjoyed that.
Don't forget, if you like what you hear, get over to musicgurus.com and check out my courses on thinking outside the box.
About the instructor

Ron Sayer is a guitarist's guitarist on the UK blues circuit and a mentor to players including Oli Brown and Sol Philcox. He has been nominated four times at the British Blues Awards - for the album 'Better Side', the single 'Don't Make Me Stay', and his co-writing on Oli Brown's 'Here I Am' - and has won Guitarist of the Year. In his courses he breaks down the phrasing, tone and feel behind electric blues lead playing. read more




