Hotel Yorba

The Intro

This intro section is deceptively tricky to play for a beginner, but so much fun. Once you get the hang of it, you'll be obsessed! The section is simply a G major open chord played for 4 quick bars (The tempo here is around 195BPM, which is hugely fast!). Breaking that down into a chord chart plus a strumming pattern, it looks like this:

However, there's a lot more going on than that! We are also playing some very cool little licks in bars 2 and 3. These are based around the G major pentatonic scale, and can be performed by simply lifting your 2nd finger. As Franco rightly points out, don't worry too much about total precision - the sound should be "casual" and a bit "messy"! Another way to think about it, is to do the lick within the strum itself, rather than getting your picking hand tangled up.

As mentioned, these licks are all based around the G major pentatonic, which looks like this:

(You can check out all the other positions for this scale across the neck using our scale tool)

Don't forget to swing this strumming pattern! The whole thing has a country feel to it, and it's important not to become too stiff and mechanical in your playing. Every now and again, step back and remind yourself of the wonderful swinging country vibe you're after!

The Verse

The Hotel Yorba verse section is nice and simple, it is just | G | G | C | C | D | D | G | G | - Using all open chords. The strumming pattern is also reasonably straightforward, using all downstrokes. However, we need to accent the 2 and the 4 beats. To do that, we want to make the 1 and 3 beat softer / smaller. It looks like this:

This verse is repeated 3 times in the song, and it's slightly different each time. In the first first we play this progression twice, then in the 2nd verse we do it 3 times, then in the 3rd verse we play it just once. Thanks Jack White! Keeping us on our toes as always.

The Break

This section is | G | G | C | C | D | D | G | G | (x2) but only strumming the first beat of each bar! This is a perfect example of what I just wrote above, dynamics in action. Same chords, same changes, but with just one strum per bar it feels like the song has softened, or relaxed. Very cool eh! That looks like this:

The Chorus

The progression in the chorus is very similar, but with a big difference right at the end - | G | G | C | C | D | D | G F5 | G | - Yep, a cheeky powerchord amongst the open chords! Before we get to that, the strumming pattern dynamically shifts again. This time, you want to get more aggressive with the downstrokes. No soft 1s and 3s here, just all out attack. This really brings the chorus to life!

That cool G to F5 part, which we can consider a riff, is a quick change and can be tricky. At 195BPM, jumping from G to F5 can feel almost impossible at first. Don't worry though, Franco has you covered with a "hack" to play the part slightly differently! Before we get to that though, here is how that would look with the F5.

So, how could we do it differently? By playing a Cadd9 instead! Live, Jack White has been known to substitute the F5 for a Cadd9 chord, which is a significantly easier change in the heat of the battle! Of course it does sound quite different to the F, but hey if it's good enough for the guy that wrote the song, that's good enough for us!

The Outro & Final Thoughts

The song ends with this outro riff, which goes | G C | G F G | where the F is a simple root note. That's it, you're done!

In my opinion the biggest challenge with this song as a beginner or improver player is the speed of it. Getting the open chord changes smooth all the way through is very challenging, but thankfully you don't need to worry about getting it perfect right away. Instead, why not think as this song as a fun challenge! How close can you get to the speed of the record right now? How about after a few weeks? After a month? Just get as close as you can and prioritise the groove of the song over absolute accuracy, that's the way Jack would want you to play!

Don't expect perfect chords, and don't expect beautiful sounds initially, just try to keep up at the speed you're playing it at (YouTube's slow down feature is perfect for that).

Good luck, have fun, and don't forget to drop Franco a like and a comment on the YT video to let him know you're taking the lesson!