No hijack forgiveness needed David, it sent me on a YouTube search and gave me a few great ideas. In general anyway though I like the kind of thinking that branches out, so hijacking posts doesn’t bother me. 
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Thanks Jason. I use Justin’s Time Trainer app when I’m practicing, so it’s very easy to change the tempo on that metronome. I like the way you talk about working on the ‘song’ playing to a metronome or beat, that makes perfect sense to me although I think some would disagree.
I will experiment with gain (and other settings) as I practice.
Re amp volume, I hadn’t thought about that relative to the acoustic sound of the guitar. I’ve been cautious with amp volume because our music room is right beside the living room. I might end up moving the amps downstairs.
cool that you were brave enough to dig into this song.
It’s an excellent practice for phrasing and precise bending.
Good job!
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Thanks Lieven, ‘brave’ and ‘foolhardy’ might be opposite sides of the same coin! But it’s an amazing song, I definitely like to stretch myself (without teetering over the edge too frequently into complete discouragement), and it’s I’ll say ‘real song’ practice for bends.
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Yes @Richard_close2u there’s a couple of songs that will need to be played on my Gretsch
First collab with @TheMadman_tobyjenner went well, so who knows?
@mari you’re making good progress and this is a fiendish piece to get sounding even halfway decent.
I tried and fell somewhat flat a number of years ago.
I did record an acoustic backing track that you are welcome to play over. Gary Moore - Parisienne Walkways - Acoustic Backing Track - YouTube
I had an mp3 version shared somewhere in the webosphere but it has gone. I will have to dig in my back up drive vaults to see if I still have the original saved somewhere. You’d be more than welcome to it. 
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Thanks @Richard_close2u yes that’s a lovely backing track, I will use it in lieu of a metronome I found your lead cover too, bends really are challenging! Nice go at the super fast lick though.
Thanks Mari.
If / when you do use a metronome remember that this is in 6/8 so you want to set the metronome to tap on the 1 and the 4.
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@mari Found the mp3 and uploaded in shareable format to here: Stream Parisienne Walkways Acoustic Backing Track By MrClose2u by Mrclose2u | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
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Knowing you @mari it won’t be long before you master this song, then blow us all away with your recording.
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Thank you @batwoman , there’s lots of resources to help me learn it, and lots of very helpful people too
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Nice stuff Mari. It amazes me how people manage to remember all the notes.
It will be good to see the two side by side when you are happy with a version you have done a bit further down the line.
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Nice start on a challenging track! Don’t be fooled by the slow tempo into thinking it’s easy to cover (which I also don’t think you are )
I once saw someone comment on Gary Moores playing: “He’s difficult to copy when he’s playing fast, and he’s difficult to cover when he’s playing slow”.
There is so much in his “touch” and tone. Vibrato, bends and micro inflections.
What I noticed in your playing is that your bends are actually for the most part very accurate… and I could see that you registered when a few of them didn’t hit the mark exactly right, which indicates a good ear. So great job so far!
As for the tone. You definitely will want to use a humbucker. On a HSS strat you’ll have to use the bridge PU, but listening to the original I’m not sure Gary is on a neck PU anyway. But try dialing your tone knob back a bit, perhaps to 6-7. And despite there being quite some gain on the track a strat can often sound much “sweeter” if you dial the volume back just a touch… somewhere between 8 and 9. Then compensate on the amp to get the gain you need.
Note there is a huge difference between Gary’s live tone and the studio recording for this track. The studio version is actually not THAT gainy. The less gain you use, the more sweet the tone will sound… but the harder it will also be to make it sing.
In that Deep Purple cover I posted yesterday I was actually playing a strat style guitar on a bridge single coil pickup, and on a quite low gain amp. It was a bit challenging to make the solos sing for those exact reasons.
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Hey Mari, I’m looking forward to following your progress on this thread
Kudos for posting early on, when you are able to make it through, but requiring a lot of work still.
Lots of suggestions on what to work on technique- and tone-wise to help you on your quest, so I might as well offer my 2 cents as well: Figure as much as possible on your own. Sure, it’ll take you longer, but you’ll learn loads in the process.
Ah, I had forgotten about your ‘new’ strat. I was well envious back then 
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Thank you @SgtColon . it will be awhile before I’ve got it all, but I plan to post updates that will hopefully show progress.
And thanks @brianlarsen . And you’re right, I waited until the initial butchering progressed to being able to make it all the way through for my first post, although the song requires a LOT of work still. And thank you for your input, that is great input. I listened to the song a lot yesterday and realized that there were quite a few short notes (almost staccato), so then I was trying to incorporate that into my playing in places. So yes it was others’ input to listen to the track more, but then me learning from my own listening. And I’m also backing up and spending more time on individual bends. This song is great for learning, not just for learning the song.
As for my Strat - 
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Thank you @Kasper very much for the comments, and the input, and to @DavidP for asking if you had any!! All the specific suggestions are great, but I think the biggest thing I get from your post is the idea of ‘make your solo sing’ (which you did a might fine job on for that Deep Purple track btw!). ‘Make your solo sing’ speaks to being able to go beyond the notes and the technique to the heart, which you do so well. Thanks for that input.
It was actually @TheMadman_tobyjenner who mentioned Kasper, Mari, my input was that @MikeSebastianP has also done some Gary Moore covers that sound just like the original to me.
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