I will call this post..."In Over My Head".
Several weeks ago as I was setting on my couch trying to play my acoustic, I ended up playing around with the "Hotel California" chords. Turns out this is a great practice piece since it uses so many different chords. Also found out that it is played with a capo so I dug out my unused capo that I received for Christmas a few years ago and started plucking away. There are only two chord progressions (verse and chorus) so once I had those down I figured I had the song figured out. When I saw this months challenge was to record a song about a place, naturally I thought it would be a great idea to record Hotel California. Obviously I didn't think this through very well, but got started laying down the acoustic tracks. I realized after listening to my recordings back that my finger picking, acoustic guitar skills are severely lacking!!! I continued on, adding the electric guitar parts. I soon realized this was not going to be a note for note cover, so hopefully my guitar parts capture the feel of the song while utilizing my "guitar 101" playing style. I was smart enough at the outset to decide that I was not going to attempt the guitar solo, so I opted to get the 45 (single) version of the backing track for the drums. At this point I hadn't really given much thought to the vocals, just figuring that I would fake my way through it when the time came. Today I finally finished up the acoustic and electric guitar parts and made a few attempts at vocals. I guess that I should have given it more thought.
For the time being, I am throwing in the towel and using the backing track vocals. No sense in ruining the song more that I already have.
If there are any Don Henley / Eagles style vocalists out there that want to strut your stuff, let me know and I can send you the track with no vocals.
Hotel California My Guitars - NOT my vocals