see I have a capo on the 2nd fret here and what we're gonna do is we have been
playing chords relative to the capo so instead of playing an f-sharp major
chord like eglee in the original we're gonna be playing in E major so this this
capo is gonna help us eliminate some of the Barre chords the only Barre chord
will have to contend with in the easy version is the F major Barre chord and
if you want to you can play the F major 7 as you can hear it doesn't sound this
nice is the full bar chord so I recommend using that but if you're not
keen on the bar chords yet don't worry now all the picking patterns and
strumming patterns I'm gonna go over here can be applied to the original song
so if you want to go look it up in the original chords but if you want to go to
my website Lauren Bateman calm I have the easy version on my website and
that's what we're gonna be doing in this tutorial lesson here so let's start up
with the picking pattern for the intro ok for the intro first let's discuss how
we can keep this really simple so say you're a beginner and we want to keep
this really simple so first let's go over the chord progression and the great
thing about this song is it does have a repetitive chord progression it's just
the chord progression is eight chords long so that chord progression is it's
gonna be a minor E G d/f C D minor and E and then we're going to repeat that for
the intro or repeat that through for the verses the choruses we're gonna change
it up a little bit but also the outro at the end with the really long solo it's
the same corporate so that's nice so four chords a minor E
G d/f C D minor E we're going to play through that twice for the intro but if
you want to keep things simple a great way to do it would just to be three
playing with eighth notes if you're absolutely simplified and you want to
keep it simple one and two and three ten four and we can use that for the verses
but for this intro we can go one and two and three and four and one and two and
three and one and two and three and two
the other thing you could do is you could just you know do one in three if
you wanted that works really well too opens it up a bit more and then you can
switch to the eighth note strumming for the verse so what we're going to do
let's talk about the picking pattern that I was using in the intro here now
you can improvise with this I'm going to show you a basic pattern and you can add
or subtract to that as much as you want when I play songs like this so this song
is a little bit more in the intermediate realm even with the strumming patterns
I'm going to show you later there's a lot of improvisation
I don't usually play it the same way through twice because when you're
focusing on playing something and singing your guitars on automatic pilots
on my head kind of does whatever my hand wants it to do so if we talk about this
picking pattern we're basically starting with the strum putting some picking
notes in between and then ending with the strum and all of this takes place
between the one beat and the three beat so on the one beat we're strumming so we
start with a minor we're gonna strum down and then I'm
gonna pick the bottom three strings starting on the high e going to the B
and then going to the G so it's going to be
that's thinking power
and then I'm gonna strum again so it's
and I would switch to the next chord which would be the E major and same
thing
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now I understand this doesn't sound exactly like the intro but that's why
it's the easier version this is a way for you to play it and have it
accessible to you without going too crazy so that's the basics of it so it's
first string second string third string strong and then we got G finally D
and you can do that for the entire intro if I wanted to just show you a little
bit more what you can do if you want to spice it up even more
so you can see you don't have to just you can do up picking down picking you
can kind of split things up you heard I threw a couple hammer ons in there which
if you listen to the original they have hammer ons in the original doesn't have
a capo so they do a lot of things based off of the open strings so that's kind
of a cool thing but just shows you how you can spice it up even more if you
want to try and play around with it but we're gonna stick with strum
so that's how I would approach the intro for this song
now let's go to the verse alright so the verse is using that same 8 chord chord
progression a minor E G d/f C D minor E the only thing is we're going to start
strumming now and the strumming pattern that we're going to use for this is has
a little bit of a sixteenth note to it so the first half is going to be one two
and so it's going to be down
and then the second half is going to be three and four anda
so both of those together it's gonna be
one two
now
down
now now
so that's the strum it played a little bit quicker for you to hear what it
sounds like
go to the second strumming pattern
and they gives you a feel of what that's going to sound like so this one
fortunately we have downs on all of the downbeats the threes the ones the twos
the fours so that's the strumming pattern we're gonna use for the verse so
if I go through one more time it's gonna be I'll start on Nemo you're here and
I'll stay on a minor it's gonna be
down down
that's the strumming pattern we're gonna use for the verse now we're gonna jump
to the chorus and our core progression is gonna change a little bit and our
strumming pattern is gonna open up a little bit and come a little bit more
syncopated so friends let's talk about the chord progression because we're
gonna change things up a little bit so it's gonna be F then c e7 a minor F C D
minor E so again we have an eighth chord progression for our chorus now the
strumming pattern we're going to be doing a lot of up strums so it starts
exactly the same as the last pattern so we have the down down down that's how
it's gonna start I guess I should start on the F chord the first chord at the
core so it's gonna be down now after that we're not gonna be playing a
downbeat on the three we're actually gonna be playing two more ups after that
so if we play this pattern it's gonna be down down down that's the whole thing
ready
a whole pattern so the timing is 1/2 and e4 and so we don't have any strum on the
three let me do it again so it's gonna be now if you want to keep things simple
on the chorus all you have to do you can just you can keep do all down strums if
you want to just do the chorus one or one two three or you can do something
simple like that or one two three or if you want to keep things really simple if
you want to challenge yourself a little bit with this syncopated starting
pattern let's break down that rhythm one bit at a time because for some people
doing multiple ups if you've never done that before it can be tricky so let's
start with just one up so we got the first part of the pattern down
let's do it yeah down right now what we're gonna do is we're just have the
second house so it's gonna be down more time down good now we're gonna add a
third up so it's gonna be down down down one last time now
all right that's all the up strum so now we're just gonna add the down down-up to
the end that's the strumming pattern you're gonna use to the course they'll
sound like this
and there you have it absolute pattern we're gonna use for the chorus and
that's really it and so you may still have your intro which is the picking
part your verses and your courses and the end of the song is that solo and of
course we had our original verse
strumming in chords and I will kind of intensify that with the solo so I might
even do some builds if we're going into
I switch them all beeps eighth note down strums at that point so these are things
like I said when I play something like this I'm not thinking about the
strumming powder my hand is just playing I'm trying to maintain some semblance of
that strumming pattern but I'm probably never playing it the same way twice
because I'm not focusing on it especially with this because we're
moving from picking to a strumming pattern that's on the downbeat to a
strumming pattern that's on an upbeat so it's it's a little bit tricky moving
between these patterns so first I would recommend practicing the picking and
then practicing your verse strumming and then practicing your chorus strumming
and don't even worry about changing chords just practice the strums first
then move through your chord progressions and then try sewing all of
the parts together moving from one flawlessly into another so that gives
you some ideas of how to play Hotel California I hope you guys enjoyed it if
you want to make a donation visit Lauren Pittman comback slash donate I
appreciate everything you guys do I hope you like the new camera make sure to
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back comment back whenever I can and feel free to go check out some of the
other videos and other video lessons in my youtube channel have a great day guys