Maybe not your thing musically, but hey, Blue Guitar (perversely, played on a red guitar 
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This is just awsome Kasper!! That solo is just so cool…
I saw them live last year, but their regular guitarist was on a «sicknote» so he was replaced by a guy called Simon Mcbride… awsome on guitar, but not quite Ritchie Blackmore.
Aggree with David though that he is just as good as Page, think Blackmore has a cooler tone…
Anyway… awsome played! 
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Brilliant, so smooth and accurate
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@Kasper
perfect performance! Just brilliant 
In music stores pedals, guitar straps, or at least a handful of picks should be rewarded for this!
Thanks for sharing,
Leo
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@Kasper Wow - thanks for sharing!
So well done - something to aspire to.
I’m a sucker for learning solos…just wish I could deliver as well as you just did.
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Brilliant , this was really well played and a lovely clean sound, no band bends ( my speciality). I forgot how much I loved a good Blackmore solo, think it is the classical musical influence which gets me.
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Oh this is so good! Great playing on this @Kasper
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Thank you so much, all of you who have been listening and commenting! 
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Good work Kasper. The one I can play is the two string version of the riff. I’ll sure get kicked out if I try that one.
@Kasper this is so cool 
I’ve picked-up Smoke on The Water only last month (still consolidating Grade 2 here), and decided to give the solo a try - it did not seem thaaaat hard to begin with. Was I mistaken, LOL …
Anyways, finally yesterday I was able to train my fingers all the way to the last part, so at least I have the mechanics of the whole solo down - although I’m cheating a bit by replacing some of the more challenging bends. And as far as tempo, I can play it fairly accurate at 70-80%, but beyond that I tend to mess up the faster sections. Goas is to be AVOYP-ready in another month or so.
Anyway, LOADS of fun playing it, I think that’s the very 1st “real solo” that I managed to get under my fingers (cue the badge: achievement unlocked!)
Thanks for sharing, I’m playing it often studying your fingering and piking-up hints.
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Congrats, that’s one hell of a milestone to reach!
For myself, if I manage to get something all the way through at 80% that’s usually a sign that I will eventually manage to play it at full speed. So a very important checkpoint to get to 
There is nothing wrong with replacing part of a solo with your own version of the licks, and sometimes taking out just a few troublesome notes (due to fingering that just doesn’t suit your playing, or just raw speed) can transform the whole thing from being impossible to doable.
Some tips to progress: It’s important to recognize those specific areas of the solo where you mess up at faster tempos, and be very careful not to “burn in” those mistakes.
Instead, try doing some focused practice on just those sections - working on a very small part at a time. If you have a program like Transcribe! set up a loop around the hard spot, and just work on that.
You can use a “rubber banding” technique to good results: Say your current max tempo for playing it exact is 70%, then bounce the tempo a bit back and forth around that area. Practice it a bit at 50%, really focusing on the details and playing it with precision and ease. Then try it at 85% for a few reps… that will likely fail, but then when you bounce it back to, say, 75% - all of a sudden that tempo feels slow, and you’ll likely get it. Don’t necessarily use those exact numbers, it’s more the idea of bouncing back and forth that matters. And good luck, hope to see you perform it here eventually!
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I’m no shredder but if I want to learn something outside my current speed range, this algorithm works for me too: Most of the time as fast as I can maintaining full accuracy, but occasionally push it beyond that for a few reps, maybe with a few mistakes. Then back to accurate speed, concentrating on the bits that I screwed up when pushing it.
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Thanks for the support and detailed explanation!
As a matter of fact, when you started describing the “rubber banding” technique, I had one of those “wait a minute …” moments! A couple weeks ago as I was stuck with the solo thinking I’d never get it up to full tempo, I did a search on the community to see how others approached the subject, and came up on this excellent explanation of yours from Feb 2022.
Up to then I was trying to slowly increase the tempo, a little at the time, not going beyond where I was already comfortable at. Since I’ve adopted this method (practice slowly to avoid mistakes, and “crazy fast” to break the rut), I’ve made visible progress.
One other thing that I did not need with my earlier practice, but with this solo made a ton of difference is to “warm up” the fingers before the main course: as I sit down to practice the solo, I start by doing a bit of “finger gym”, some spider walks and scales. Some 10min or so of this and then I have my fingers ready for the rest of the practice.
On using loops and learning sections: totally agreed! Personally, I love Anytune Pro (iOS only) for that, as it allows me to mark a song into individual sections, setup loops, etc. Since this is a complicated solo, I naturally picked-up where there are clearly defined frases and learnt them one at a time - and in fact only finished this process last weekend.
When starting a new section, on a constant repeat at a moderate speed, I found it also works if before I start trying to play I just “sing along” (solfegge?) to the notes, until I can do that consistently from memory. Having the phrase down right in my mind/voice seems to help a lot in guiding the finger to do the right thing
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Great playing man rock on!
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