A History of Santana: The River of Sound and Color
YOUR OWN LITTLE MUSIC STUDIO ON CD ROM?
A Review of A History of Santana: The River of Sound and Color
by Brad Jeske
In the early sixties music was going through a transformation. In San Francisco rock music was the avant-garde style that was drawing musicians from all over, among them a young guitarist named Carlos Santana. He brought his early influences from his family of musicians, and from a friend who showed him the legendary music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, a style that would change his life: the blues. These were the things that turned Carlos Santana into one of music’s most innovative guitar virtuosos.Now Cube Art Inc. has released a new CD: A History of Santana: The River of Color and Sound that chronicles Santana’s life and music on one CD. The program is designed around a colorful 360 degree landscape of a river and mountains. Contained within this landscape are the five choices: Electric Church, History, Live Performances, Guitar Instruction, and Influences.
The Electric Church is an actual building that house Santana’s vast collection of guitars, art work, posters, and much more. Jaunt through the virtual building using QuickTime VR technology, which allows for 360 degree exploration, and check out the two floors and four rooms that houses this extensive collection. By moving your mouse over any area, when your mouse pointer turns into a hand, just click it on and more information will appear. With the guitars you can get detailed photographs showing the impressive art work that adorns some of Santana’s custom made Paul Reed instruments. Anywhere in the Church you can zoom in and out to obtain a closer look at anything contained in the building, but unless you have a high-resolution monitor, forget it, you’ll get nothing but a screen full of fuzzy pixels.The Live Stage provides a look at various tours over the past few years. You move a world globe, highlighting different cities around the world to get concert photographs, the musicians who toured with Santana, and even some live clips of concerts. I was disappointed that the clips weren’t longer, many were just quick two to five seconds snippets that left me wanting more. There are interviews with the current band members who talk about their experiences working with Santana.Take a trip with Santana in the History section. Each year between 1961 and 1996 provides a list of records released, record art, photos, and video clips. Along with that text is a special side/narration by actor Edward James Olmos that chronicles Santana’s life as a child growing with his musical family, and his start with the violin until he discovered the electric guitar.
For all you guitar players out there, Guitar Instruction is a chance to see and hear Santana play from five different songs. Learn the proper fingering, tone, and the inspiration that sparked these songs. With the use of video clips, learn the fingering technique for these songs, along with the tone for creating the proper effect. He also spends a minute talking about how these songs came about. Santana had four major influences which he talks about in the Influences section. The four are: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bob Marley, and Jimi Hendrix. Santana gives his impressions of these great musicians and what impact they had on him and music in life. These impromptu reverences seem a bit awkward as Santana appears to have these scripted out, but rather talks from the heart. There are many long pauses as he searches for the right words. There also performances of these artists, as well as photos and text information about each one of these performers, and how and what shaped their lives.
An added bonus to the CD is VUSIC The Screen Raver, which could be best described as a what a screen saver might have looked like if computers had been around in the sixties. The iconography patterns used for Vusic were chosen by Santana. The patterns change with the music, or they can be manipulated by the user. This was fun at first, but I found it to grow a bit tiresome after a while.A History of Santana provides us with a brief glimpse into the world of this renowned performer. Personally, I wanted to see more video clips and sound tracks of Santana’s music then having the VUSIC on this CD; I found this CD falls a bit short for me. But what is offered here is a look into the music and the life of a important influential guitarist whose music is deeply personal and full of melodic passion. Possibly this CD could open up his music to an entire new young generation of people who may have missed the musical beauty that Santana has provided for us throughout the years.
Multimedia Cafe Scorecard
| Product: | A History of Santana: The River of Sound and Color |
| Company: | Graphix Zone |
| Cost: | $39.95 |
System Requirements:
WINDOWS:
486DX2 33Mhz
8MB of RAM
16 bit Sound card
65K colors
640×480 screen resolution
2x CD-ROM drive
Modem (optional)
MACINTOSH:
Color Mac with 68040 or higher
System 7.0 or higher
8MB RAM
Thousand of colors
640×480 screen resolution
2x CD-ROM
modem (optional)
Breakdown:
Entertainment Value 4
Educational Value 1
Concept 2
Depth 4
Interface 4
Overall Score:
(* 0 rating, 0 votes)
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