Hotel California
by The Eagles
HOTEL CALIFORNIA
Hotel California is one of those
songs that’s popular with bands
and has got a really distinctive -
and cool! - bass line!
In this tutorial we’re going to out-
line the main six parts that you
need to play through this tune.
Now this line - and the backing
track that accompanies this lesson
- were made with close reference
to the isolated ‘stems’ of the song
that were used for the ‘Guitar Hero’
or ‘Rock Band’ version of the song.
Here’s the intro - play these long notes twice:
Next up is the verse - we’ve split that into two sections. Here’s the first
section:
2 | Hotel California | how-to-play-bass.com
And here’s the second section:
3 | Hotel California | how-to-play-bass.com
Following on from the verse is the first chorus:
4 | Hotel California | how-to-play-bass.com
The Chorus leads straight into Verse 2 - which is identical to Verse 1.
Chorus 2 though is subtly different from Chorus 1:
5 | Hotel California | how-to-play-bass.com
After this chorus there is a verse that’s made up of the whole note sec-
tion as per the intro for the first half of the verse, and then it uses the full
rhythmic second half of the verse as per part 2 of the verse.
This leads to a guitar solo - here’s the first chorus of the guitar solo:
The second and third choruses of the guitar solo are pretty similar to
this. The fourth chorus though is different and here’s what’s played:
6 | Hotel California | how-to-play-bass.com
After this chorus the bass line goes back to the kind of pattern used in
the verse as the song fades out - you can see the first three bars or so of
this notated at the end of the section above.
And that’s Hotel California!
7 | Hotel California | how-to-play-bass.com