Ok,
I've been a huge fan of The Eagle's since I was a kid and I spent many nights, laying in bed listening with headphones, and making myself a promise to one day record this song. Back in 2016, my drummer friend and i got together and recorded a very basic version of this song, with just drums and bass. I pitched it to several of our band lineups and nobody would perform it, for whatever reason they had. The song sat gathering virtual dust for 4 years.
Needless to say, every time I listened to the original song, I just got discouraged because they - The Eagles - are that good. I knew I couldn't create a recording that would even get honorable mention from them and I just set the project aside. Following the death of our bassist in February 2019, I began to re-evaluate this pattern of thinking. Maybe getting a version completed beats dying and leaving a couple of unfinished tracks.
The year passed on into 2020 and I kept making excuses....
This weekend, I was doing desert exploration stuff and just had the feeling that it was time to record this song. I decided that the entire song needed to be played on my Von Herndon THM (Two headed Monster) double neck, if for nothing more than pure nostalgia. I decided that it was pointless to copy The Eagles, so I composed some of my own guitar harmony parts, which are not nearly as good as Don and Joe's work on the original, but then again, my version is, at the very least, unique. On the main solo, I remained very faithful to Felder and Walsh's original work.
The 12 string neck is always tuned to E flat, so I simply used a capo to give me a nice tone in the song's original key of B minor. The rhythm guitar parts were played through a Boss AC-3 Acoustic Simulator, with a borrowed Flanger and vintage Arion SCH-1 Stereo Chorus. The 'clean' rhythm guitar is panned center with two 'colored' tracks panned right and left and I worked to create the 'swirling' effect that blew my mind when i first listened to this song with headphones in 1977.
All guitar parts are played on the VH Double Neck. and all parts were recorded on the Blackstar ID-Core 100 direct-out into my Focusrite 2i2 onto Audacity.
On most of the verse parts, I reduced the guitar volume (to 5) and altered the tone (10) to give it more of a single-coil like sound, while trying to retain the original feel and tonal signature of the original work.
On the main solo, I started out playing one track of guitar with a very high gain setting on my Blackstar ID-Core 100, with bridge pickup volume at around '8' with tone at '5' respectively. I then panned that track - about the first 1/4 of the solo - both left and right, so what the listener hears is true unison. About a 1/4 of the way into the main solo, (where the abrupt 'whoop!' effect comes in) i switch to the middle position and record two different (doubled) solos for the remainder of the passage. I also intentionally avoided the harmony guitar parts on the outro solo, because I thought it would be a better representation of what i could do live without a second guitarist.
I sang all of the background vocal parts and sang (4) lead vocals - Two of them are painted heavily with reverb and appear at 100% left and right. It's a very subtle, far off in the distance effect. Two lead vocals are painted with different delay settings and appear at 70% left and right. I wasn't really happy with how the vocals sounded. They were recorded on my Scarlett CM25 MkII microphone. Nothing special here.
Again, I do not consider myself a singer, but since this is a solo project, I had no choice but to wing it...
So, here for your enjoyment, is the culmination of my 4 years of laziness and excuses. I do not think this is a particularly great version, but at least it is one more box checked off the bucket list...
Thanks for tolerating me...
Hotel Califas - The 4 Year Project
I've been a huge fan of The Eagle's since I was a kid and I spent many nights, laying in bed listening with headphones, and making myself a promise to one day record this song. Back in 2016, my drummer friend and i got together and recorded a very basic version of this song, with just drums and bass. I pitched it to several of our band lineups and nobody would perform it, for whatever reason they had. The song sat gathering virtual dust for 4 years.
Needless to say, every time I listened to the original song, I just got discouraged because they - The Eagles - are that good. I knew I couldn't create a recording that would even get honorable mention from them and I just set the project aside. Following the death of our bassist in February 2019, I began to re-evaluate this pattern of thinking. Maybe getting a version completed beats dying and leaving a couple of unfinished tracks.
The year passed on into 2020 and I kept making excuses....
This weekend, I was doing desert exploration stuff and just had the feeling that it was time to record this song. I decided that the entire song needed to be played on my Von Herndon THM (Two headed Monster) double neck, if for nothing more than pure nostalgia. I decided that it was pointless to copy The Eagles, so I composed some of my own guitar harmony parts, which are not nearly as good as Don and Joe's work on the original, but then again, my version is, at the very least, unique. On the main solo, I remained very faithful to Felder and Walsh's original work.
The 12 string neck is always tuned to E flat, so I simply used a capo to give me a nice tone in the song's original key of B minor. The rhythm guitar parts were played through a Boss AC-3 Acoustic Simulator, with a borrowed Flanger and vintage Arion SCH-1 Stereo Chorus. The 'clean' rhythm guitar is panned center with two 'colored' tracks panned right and left and I worked to create the 'swirling' effect that blew my mind when i first listened to this song with headphones in 1977.
All guitar parts are played on the VH Double Neck. and all parts were recorded on the Blackstar ID-Core 100 direct-out into my Focusrite 2i2 onto Audacity.
On most of the verse parts, I reduced the guitar volume (to 5) and altered the tone (10) to give it more of a single-coil like sound, while trying to retain the original feel and tonal signature of the original work.
On the main solo, I started out playing one track of guitar with a very high gain setting on my Blackstar ID-Core 100, with bridge pickup volume at around '8' with tone at '5' respectively. I then panned that track - about the first 1/4 of the solo - both left and right, so what the listener hears is true unison. About a 1/4 of the way into the main solo, (where the abrupt 'whoop!' effect comes in) i switch to the middle position and record two different (doubled) solos for the remainder of the passage. I also intentionally avoided the harmony guitar parts on the outro solo, because I thought it would be a better representation of what i could do live without a second guitarist.
I sang all of the background vocal parts and sang (4) lead vocals - Two of them are painted heavily with reverb and appear at 100% left and right. It's a very subtle, far off in the distance effect. Two lead vocals are painted with different delay settings and appear at 70% left and right. I wasn't really happy with how the vocals sounded. They were recorded on my Scarlett CM25 MkII microphone. Nothing special here.
Again, I do not consider myself a singer, but since this is a solo project, I had no choice but to wing it...
So, here for your enjoyment, is the culmination of my 4 years of laziness and excuses. I do not think this is a particularly great version, but at least it is one more box checked off the bucket list...
Thanks for tolerating me...
Hotel Califas - The 4 Year Project
