hey, welcome to 12tone!
when I was younger, Hotel California was always one of my favorite songs in my dad's music
collection.
it was unlike anything else I'd ever heard, and the atmosphere it created was mesmerizing,
so now that I'm a real music theorist, I thought it'd be fun to go back and take a look at
what it was I was actually hearing.
it starts like this: (bang) and I'm just gonna stop it there for a second.
these are what's called arpeggios, where the notes of a chord are played one at a time
instead of all at once, and they're all over this intro.
that's not a problem, though: all we have to do is squish them all together to get back
our full chord, and once we do that, we have B minor and F#7, which are the I chord and
the V chord in B minor.
this immediately brings to mind the concept of functional harmony, which as we've mentioned
elsewhere is the idea that different chords in a key have different functions or jobs
to do.
the I chord has what's called tonic function, which means it provides a sense of rest, while
the V chord has dominant function, which means it points back to the I chord.
so far, we're off to a fairly simple start.
but the F#7 doesn't resolve like we'd expect.
instead, we get this (bang) which is where things start to get weird.
whereas before the chord qualities were fairly straightforward, here we've got some more
exotic sounds.
this Asus2 chord, for instance, is what happens when you take a normal A chord and replace
the 3rd degree with a note a major 2nd above the root.
this creates some ambiguity because it's not clear whether it's supposed to be major or
minor, and I think that's the point here: based on the key, we'd expect to see A major,
and using the sus2 chord instead removes some of the brightness that would've created.
likewise, this E9 chord has an added note, called a tension, which again adds more color
to it.
it's also worth noting that these alterations make the chords easier to play on a guitar,
but as a theorist I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
anyway, those changes aside, there's also something else going on here: a harmonic motif.
this is when the same basic chord movement is repeated over and over, and we can see
that by comparing the chords from the first part (bang) to the chords in the second.
(bang) in both cases, you have a starting chord, followed by a dominant 7th whose root
is a fourth lower.
all we've done is shifted the pattern down a whole step.
that creates a problem, though: the F#7 was pointing back to the I chord, which means
it had dominant function, but the E9 is actually pointing to some sort of A chord instead.
it's still directional, but instead of leading home it wants to take us to a secondary location,
so we just call it a secondary dominant.
that doesn't resolve either, though, instead feeding into this (bang) which is another
statement of our harmonic motif, again lowered a whole step.
the precise shapes of the chords are slightly different, but the overall effect is the same,
and finally we end with this (bang) which is just the IV and V chords.
the IV chord has subdominant function, which means its job is to create instability and
set up that V chord, which then finally resolves back to the start of the phrase.
but there's something bigger going on here that gets lost when we take things in little
chunks like this.
let's zoom out a bit and look at the whole progression (bang) now let's remove the unresolved
dominants.
(bang) you know what, let's drop this E minor 7 too, to get to a nice, even number of chords,
and while we're at it we'll clean this up to A major, which leaves us with… (bang)
one of my favorite chord progressions, often called the Andalusian Cadence, which is basically
just a walk down the minor scale from the I chord to the V. it's a popular technique
in flamenco and other guitar-heavy genres, and this whole intro seems to be just an intensely
decorated version of it.
that progression continues through the verse, which means our next stop is the chorus: (bang)
first, I want to talk about the transition: the verse ends with F#7, which we said is
supposed to go to B minor, but the chorus starts with G major instead.
this is what's called a deceptive resolution, and it works because G major is almost identical
to B minor.
there's only one note different, so even though it's not where we expect it to go, it's still
a pretty solid resolution.
but moving on to the chorus itself, we have a bit of a problem.
we could keep analyzing it in B minor, but if we do that it doesn't really make a lot
of sense.
instead, I'd probably analyze this section in the key of D major.
this is called a relative modulation and it's incredibly subtle because we don't actually
change any of the notes, we just change how we use them in order to create a different
sense of tonality.
it's a small difference, but it leads to a completely new harmonic landscape.
anyway, we start here with the IV chord, followed by the I. the IV chord is unstable but not
very directional, so moving from it back to the I gives us a weaker resolution than we'd
get from, say, the V. (bang) this is often called a plagal cadence, and it helps us avoid
creating too much of a sense of finality.
then we go to F#7, followed by B minor.
this looks a lot like the V-I movement we saw earlier, but remember, we're not in B
anymore, so the F#7 has become a secondary dominant, pointing us to the VI chord.
then the song does something that honestly confused me for quite a while: it resolves
that VI minor back to the IV chord which… isn't really how that works.
if you play the chords by themselves there's no real resolution, but if you listen to the
section (bang) it's pretty clearly there, and that clip may have given you a clue as
to why: it's all in the walk-up.
the rising line, the accelerating rhythm, and the big, powerful electric guitar all
combine to create a sense of tension and release that, from a harmonic perspective, really
shouldn't exist, and I don't know about you but I find that fascinating.
anyway, that feeds into this (bang) which has that same plagal cadence as before, then
we set up a return to the verse key, with the same IV and V chords we saw at the end
of that progression.
you may be wondering about the F# augmented, but that's mainly just a bit of extra decoration.
this song is full of things like that: the Eagles were all fairly accomplished session
players before starting their own band, and they're really good at adding little flourishes
throughout the song that help keep things fresh.
they go back and forth between these two sections for a while, then finally we get to a solo
over the verse progression. in fact, not just a solo, but a conversation: this section is
a guitar battle between Don Felder and Joe Walsh, each one masterfully playing off the
other.
I'm not gonna go through the whole thing 'cause there's a lot, but I do want to talk a bit
about the end, or rather the lack of an end.
like we saw in the Comfortably Numb video, it doesn't actually finish.
in fact, it's still building momentum when they fade the track out, giving the sense
that it goes on forever, which is stunningly appropriate for this song.
after all, the last line we hear is "you can check out any time you like, but you can never
leave."
anyway, that's basically it, but before we go, I wanted to let you know that next Friday,
June 8th, Adam Neely's gonna be hosting the inaugural youtube music theory livestream
featuring me, Sideways, and 8-Bit Music theory.
we're gonna be hanging out, talking about music, and taking audience questions, and
you may even see my face.
it's at 4pm eastern time over on Adam's channel, so set an alarm or whatever, and I'll see
you there!
or, I won't, but you'll see me, and I'll read the things you're typing and… you know what,
I don't have to explain livestreams to you.
bye!
ok, seriously, thanks for watching, and thanks to Patreon patron Matt Osborn for suggesting
this song!
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