Oye Como Va – Santana

Oye Como Va Santana Ukulele- this is a song was made famous by Santana – a track on the 1970’s album ‘Abraxas’. The original was written by Tito Puente in 1963. ‘Oye Como Va’ means ‘Listen to how it goes’ or ‘Hey, How’s it going?’

The melody of this piece is primarily on strings 1 and 2 of the uke. Section A – if you play the first fretted note on the 2nd fret with your first (index) finger you will be able to reach for the 5th fret with your fourth (little) finger. A shift to position 3 (first finger at 3rd fret) should enable you to reach the 7th fret with your fourth finger in the second bar.

Section C ventures further up the neck with a move from fret 3 to 7. You can chose whether to play this with your first finger and slide up to 7th fret or alternatively – instead of playing 3rd fret first string (c note) you could play the c note on the 8th fret second string with second finger.
This puts you in position to play the 7th fret note on the first string with your first finger.

With a continuous stream of notes (Bar 44 to Bar 48 and Bar 68 to 72) it is best to use alternating right hand fingering. Try index and middle fingers or thumb and index or middle.

Nothing else in the piece is very technically demanding. Watch out the last group of three accented notes in bar 47.

Rhythm Part (Chords)
The rhythm part for the whole song consists of two chords Am and D. Apart from the accented rhythm sections it is the same rhythm all the way through. Included below is PDF that has the rhythm with a suggestion for up and down strokes and some ‘play-along’ tracks of various speeds.