Don Felder Teaches How To Play Hotel California

well this next song is hotel california when i originally wrote this song and the music for this song it was in the key of e minor which is a really great guitar key to play in and write in we recorded the whole track in e minor went in the studio and then don henley went out to start singing in a d minor and it was way too high for him he sounded kind of like barry gibb in that high falsetto so i took a guitar went out in the studio and said okay let's move it down to d minor no that's still too high c minor not a little bit too high a minor no that's too low and it wound up being in the key of b minor which is on the seventh fret so we just transposed the whole key up to b minor re-recorded the whole track and that's pretty much as you hear it on the record today when i play it live i do it in a minor it's a much friendlier guitar key to play guitar in as well as i think it drops it down a step for my voice so it really works better for me in a minor so for demonstration purposes i'm going to do this in a minor but the original key was the key of b minor so here we go here's the intro to hotel california [Music] that's pretty much the progression that happens all the way through the whole thing except for the chorus well when i originally recorded this record we did it with a 12 acoustic guitar which was a bear to play so we wound up putting a pickup in the uh in the hole and ran it out through a leslie and mike the leslie in stereo and we mic the acoustic direct in the middle of the o hole there so it gave you this kind of sweeping swirling uh guitar effect for the acoustic guitar when i wrote the part i wanted to have the bass line that's in all the chords follow the progression so i wrote the bass line that you can hear very clearly in these chords uh that followed the progression i stole that idea from chet atkins which i saw when i was 14 at daytona beach and he just blew me away he could play the bass lines and the melody at the same time so when i did this i tried to do something sort of like chet would play here it is in extra slow motion [Music] well here's the outro solo to hotel california now when i wrote this solo it's important that i play notes that bend up to chord changes and bend down the chord changes using a little vibrato just as a little sweet taste here and there along the way but it's very important when you're creating a solo to actually have the notes that are in the solo be in the chords and since this chord changes every bar as it's going through this progression it's really important to have the notes that are in the solo reflect the notes that are in the chord so here we go also there's a couple of notes that i have to bend a minor third i have to use two fingers for that pull because it's just a really strong pull to get up there so here it is [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] me [Applause] [Music] then uh [Music] um [Music] [Applause] me [Applause] [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] here's a couple of licks to go into the choruses joe plays the answer licks in the first chorus and i play the answer licks in the second chorus so here you go okay here's joe's part [Music] [Music] so [Music] here's the second chorus the ones that i played [Music] hmm [Music] here's joe's part in extra slow motion [Music] and here's my part an extra slow motion [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music]

Channel: Eddie steady 19

Views: 2,196,294

Keywords:

Id: 3KIT8s1Atbw

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 19 2022