Lauren Bateman presents a beginner-friendly lesson showing how to play The Eagles' "Hotel California" without full barre chords by using a capo (placed at the 2nd fret). She demonstrates open-chord substitutions (Am for Bm, E for F# with capo) and several F options (including Fmaj7), lists the main chords (Am, E, G, D, F, C, Dm, E7), and teaches an intro picking pattern (strum on beat 1, then three picked notes on strings 1–3) and a verse strumming pattern (sparse: down, mute or miss on beat 2, down, down-up). For the chorus she shows a two-measure-per-chord approach: first measure uses the verse pattern, second measure adds energy with a down, down, down, up, down, up pattern. She emphasizes pivot finger movement between F and C, offers play-throughs (suggesting slowing playback), and notes she cannot sing the copyrighted lyrics in the lesson.
Questions this video answers
September 23, 2023.
Capo is clipped at the 2nd fret.
Am → E → G → D → F → C → Dm → E (each chord played twice).
Chapters
Hey, guitar enthusiast. Lauren Bateman here, and I have a super easy version of Hotel California. I'm going to show you how to strum and pick along with this without using any barre chords. But we need a special tool called a capo. Okay? So I'm going to use this capo. I'm going to clip it at the second fret of the guitar. And by doing this, I'm going to show you how you can eliminate all of the bar chords from this song, but still be able to play along with the record. So by putting this capo on the second fret, if I play an A minor chord, that's like playing the B minor chord that's in the song. Okay? But because I have this capo, I don't need the bar anymore. So now I can play A minor. And instead of playing F sharp major, okay, I've got the capo here, so I don't need this bar anymore. I can just play a regular E major chord. Super awesome. So let's talk about the other open chords we're going to be using in this song. Okay, We've got a C major chord. Now a D major chord. A D minor chord. We have a G major chord. We have an E7 chord. Okay? So there's two ways you can go about doing this. The easy way is to play an E major chord and lift up the third finger. Okay. Then you get a kind of a twangy E7. Or if you like it with the pinky.
Get a little bit more of that richer twang to it. Either way is acceptable. Now the final chord. Don't yell at me. It is a bar chord. It's an F chord. But I'm going to give you three different options to play around. So pick your poison on this one so we don't have to play an F bar chord. Okay. If you can't do it, don't worry. We can always play F major 7, which works just fine and has a nice open feel to it. So I think it works well for this song too. So there's a four fingered version, there's a three fingered version, or if you're feeling fancy, you can try and do the little mini F bar chord.
Okay, I do like the sound of that one. But F major 7 will work perfectly fine for this song if you don't want to play any barre chords at all. So now that we've talked about the chords that we're going to be using in the song, let's talk about the intro and how we're Going to strum and pick along with it.
So the timing of this verse is pretty spread out. So the chord progression is A minor, E, G, D, F, C, D minor, E. It's a long chord progression, but once you play through it, it's the same progression for the intro and the verses. And we're going to be playing each one of these chords twice. And if you want the extra notes that go along with this lesson, you can always go to my website and follow along there. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be strumming and picking, and every time we get to the first beat of the measure, we're going to strum.
So it'd be 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4,. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
1, 2, 3, 4s, 1, so forth and so on.
1, 2, 3, four, 1, 2, 3, four.
So the picking is going to happen in between these two strums. So it's going to sound like this.
Okay. Something like that.
Okay, so see, it still kind of sounds like the song. It's not exactly what they're playing in the intro. Because this is a beginner lesson. So please do not yell at me in the comments that this doesn't sound exactly like the record. It's not meant to be. This is a beginner lesson. And my goal here is to make this fun and accessible for you kind of at that late beginner stage. That's what we do on this channel. Try and make guitar make sense for you. All right. So that you can have fun. All right, so now let's talk about what we're going to be doing exactly. So we have A minor. So we're going to strum on the one beat and then we're going to do three picks up from the first string, second string, third string. Okay, so it's.
Okay. So what's the timing that? It's 1, the and of 2, the and of 3 and 4, and then this strum is the one of the next measure. Now don't worry about counting the timing. Just sing it.
I find if you can sing something, you can play it without having to worry so much about the timing. And we're going to do the same thing for every single chord. So E chord, strum, and then bottom three strings.
Same thing for the G chord.
And then the D chord.
F chord. No matter which one you use, I'm going use the F major 7.
And then we have the C.
D minor.
And then the last chord.
Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to play through this beginning to end for you guys so that you can play along with me. Use the settings cog if you need to, to slow it down. All right, ready?
1, 2, 3, 4.
Alright, so that's the intro section. We're going to use that same exact chord progression on the verses. But now we're going to start strumming. So this is a strumming pattern we're going to use.
Okay, so what am I playing? It's 1, 3, 4. And we're not strumming it down on the 2. I'm still going to strum my hand. I'm just not going to hit the string.
So it's going to be 1, 2, 3, 4 and. Okay, 1, 2, 3, 4. And played down, down, down, up.
Okay, let's try that a few times.
Read.
Now. Could you add the two in there? You could, you could go 1, 2, 3, 4. And I just like the openness of this strumming pattern. I think it fits the song much better and works really well. So let's take this strumming pattern. Let's play through another chord progression on the verse so that you guys can practice along. Now. Caveat here. Very, very sorry. Hotel California is highly copywritten, so I cannot sing the lyrics over this. I know some of you know I sing and play at the same time. I can't do that on this song or they might completely block the video lesson. So I'm just going to play through the progression with the strumming pattern. So let's give it a shot. Ready?
One, two.
Here we go.
To E.
To G.
Now we got the D.
Pick your poison.
On the F.
Comes the C.
Here's the D minor.
And then finally the.
E.
And once again, for the verse, you would play through this all the way through again because that chord progression happens twice. Then we jump over to the chorus where we're going to do a little bit of a different strumming pattern. Okay. And the chords change up a bit. All right, this chord progression. So we've got. We're starting on the F chord. Then we have C. This is where that E7 comes in. A minor. Then we have F followed by C again. And there's a nice little pivot point on this F to C. So when you're making your F, whether you're making F major 7 or C, this third finger never has to move. I want you guys to be aware of that. So when we go from F to C, this is a pivot point. You can keep that finger in place. Or if you're going F major to C, it's very easy. All you have to do is just move that second finger up. Or if you're using this version of F, first finger stays in place and just move the other fingers. Okay, so try and use those pivot points if you can, but F to C, there's a nice little pivot point there. And then we have D minor to E. Now we're going to do something a little bit different here on this course. So it's two measures per chord. So what we're going to do is we're going to take the strumming pattern we use in the verse, we're going to use that on the first measure. And then the second measure, we're going to do something a little bit different with a little more spice. Because we're in the chorus of the song. I think you need a little bit more energy. So this is what we're going to do. Let's play it on the C chord here. Okay, so it's going to be 1, 2, 3, and 4.
M. Okay, 1, 2, 3, and four. And play it as down, down, down, up, down, up.
Okay, so for the first measure, we're.
Going to go 1, 2, 3, 4, and.
And then the second measure, 1, 2, 3 and 4. And here it is together.
Okay, one more time.
Ready, M.
And a little bit more up to speed. I'll start on the F chord. Ready? Here we go.
It's such a good sign.
You can see how that brings so much more energy into the chorus. So that is all the sections of this Eagle song. If you're interested in learning some more Eagles tunes, I highly recommend you check out my Eagles playlist right up there. While they last, I'll see you in another lesson video real soon.
