Hotel Califas - A Cover That Took 4 Years To make:

Robert Herndon said:
How do you compete with this???

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You don’t. I remember when I was trying to learn Behind Blue Eyes. Just couldn’t figure it out. Make mistake after mistake. Get frustrated and walk away. Not try again for too long. Then..... I either read something or saw a piece on You Tube where a guy doing a tutorial basically said..... and I paraphrase.... “stop trying to emulate the artist because you won’t. You can only play it like you.” What I took from that was that I will never play it Like Pete so stop trying. I picked up my guitar and proceeded to play Blue Eyes bumper to bumper. I sucked. I made too many mistakes. But I didn’t stop. Frankly it was an emotional moment since I’d been trying a pretty long time to do that. Happy to say. I’ve learned the piece. I still make mistake. And I still don’t sound like Pete doing it. And I couldn’t be happier.
 
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iblive said:
You don’t. I remember when I was trying to learn Behind Blue Eyes. Just couldn’t figure it out. Make mistake after mistake. Get frustrated and walk away. Not try again for too long. Then..... I either read something or saw a piece on You Tube where a guy doing a tutorial basically said..... and I paraphrase.... “stop trying to emulate the artist because you won’t. You can only play it like you.” What I took from that was that I will never play it Like Pete so stop trying. I picked up my guitar and proceeded to play Blue Eyes bumper to bumper. I sucked. I made too many mistakes. But I didn’t stop. Frankly it was an emotional moment since I’d been trying a pretty long time to do that. Happy to say. I’ve learned the piece. I still make mistake. And I still don’t sound like Pete doing it. And I couldn’t be happier.
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I'm pretty blessed to not be smart enough or skilled enough to emulate my guitar heroes, but I am still impressed by this guy....
 
Robert Herndon said:
I'm pretty blessed to not be smart enough or skilled enough to emulate my guitar heroes, but I am still impressed by this guy....
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Afterwards I was thinking about this. I think the only exception would be if you were doing a serious tribute band, people are paying money to hear you sound exactly like the band you’re tributing. Everyone else. Just have fun.

And by the way. Say what you will. You sounded pretty darn good doing Hotel.
 
iblive said:
Afterwards I was thinking about this. I think the only exception would be if you were doing a serious tribute band, people are paying money to hear you sound exactly like the band you’re tributing. Everyone else. Just have fun.
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Good Point. I spent a few years in an Eagle's tribute, so my self-imposed standards are pretty high.

You will notice that, while I am nobody at all compared to Don Felder, my version of the solo is much closer to the album version than his live version posted above. That's because the album was what we listened too back then to learn the solos, way before we had these cool You Tube instructional videos.

But, I still sound like me. You may notice the false harmonic squeal I added at 4:29, which is a kind of trademark in my playing...just a little something to remind you that it's me and it is a definite throwback to me roots in metal...
 
Robert Herndon said:
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
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Well, Robert, I never knew this thread existed, and I took a listen for the first time to Califas.
First comment is I know this song pretty well and I know you know it intimately through your story and now recording it.

2nd is believe it or not, the feature of the Original Eagles song that stands out for me is the bass.
You captured the tempo, lilty pacing, phrasing and sound of the bass really well. Score, A+

Next is the song is a long marathon which also lends challenges to good time keeping.
Both you and the drummer seem to keep it pretty steady all the way through.

After that. One thing I know that is hard to duplicate is not having multiple guitar players and bass player all playing simultaneously and working off one another.
This would be seemingly an almost impossible task to play all the parts then mesh em together in a singular piece.
I hear your playing as 1 man trying to be the whole band, captures most of the essence of the song, yet seems a little "flat" in depth of layering of the guitars in contrast to all the members of the band using little snippets repeatedly in strategic times throughout the song.

Other than little tweaks, you mostly got it and it is a good rendition from all your hard work on it.
 
chilipeppermaniac said:
Well, Robert, I never knew this thread existed, and I took a listen for the first time to Califas.
First comment is I know this song pretty well and I know you know it intimately through your story and now recording it.

2nd is believe it or not, the feature of the Original Eagles song that stands out for me is the bass.
You captured the tempo, lilty pacing, phrasing and sound of the bass really well. Score, A+

Next is the song is a long marathon which also lends challenges to good time keeping.
Both you and the drummer seem to keep it pretty steady all the way through.

After that. One thing I know that is hard to duplicate is not having multiple guitar players and bass player all playing simultaneously and working off one another.
This would be seemingly an almost impossible task to play all the parts then mesh em together in a singular piece.
I hear your playing as 1 man trying to be the whole band, captures most of the essence of the song, yet seems a little "flat" in depth of layering of the guitars in contrast to all the members of the band using little snippets repeatedly in strategic times throughout the song.

Other than little tweaks, you mostly got it and it is a good rendition from all your hard work on it.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Man...

I've always had to work alone on my own projects, despite always being there for everyone else....I'm lucky to at least have my drummer.
 
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