← SONGS

Hotel California · The Eagles

EXERCISE 42 OF 43
2-bar fill at bar 120
121 / 121 BARS COVERED
0 / 43 PASSED · 2 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO 2
COUNT-IN
PART A
CHORUS
PART M
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
6 groovesCMAES1+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 10
LAND · 10
RUN · 1
JOIN · 7
LINK · 4
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Hotel California on drums

121 bars, 6:38, at 73 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot and nothing else.

51 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
73 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
121
LENGTH
6:38
DIFFICULTY
51/100

silence through bars 1-8, ride through bars 9-16 and hi-hat through bars 17-121.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-31, 33 and 35, and 21 more places -- 51.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    17
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-xxx-x-x-xxx-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-----x-|
Hotel California -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

10 fills to learn, played 22 times: bars 32, 36, 48, 56, 60, 72 and 16 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 32 exercises -- the grooves, the fills, and the joins between sections, which is where players actually come off -- and puts them in the order a teacher would. Each one opens on a reduction you can already play and adds the notes back a rung at a time, with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. The grooves the song is built on -- C, E -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- M -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  3. Through the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus and Part M -- 6 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  5. Bars 64-95 -- 8 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  6. Bars 95-108 -- 8 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  8. Through the Outro 2 -- 2 exercises, about 7 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Hotel California?

73 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. Slow enough to hear every mistake, which is why the room lets you sit at the written tempo rather than under it.

Is Hotel California hard to play on drums?

51 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 31 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

121 bars, about 6:38 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 32 exercises over 8 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Hotel California?

10 fills to learn, played 22 times: bars 32, 36, 48, 56, 60, 72 and 16 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 121 BARS ANALYSED