Understanding Smoke On The Water 

Support 12tone on Patreon to help us keep making cool videos! www.patreon.com/12tonevideos Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) Apologies for the long delay between the last video and this one. I had some family stuff that required my attention. 2) Yes, I know the logo in the thumbnail wasn't the one they were using in the early '70s, but in my defense the one they were using in the early '70s was just their name in a weird font, and that doesn't look good in thumbnails. It was used during the first Mark II reunion, so I'm calling it close enough. 3) Most of my account of the Montreux fire is drawn from this post by the European Society of Fire Prevention Engineers: www.sfpe.org/publications/periodicals/sfpeeuropedigital/sfpeeurope25/europeissue25feature5 Because it seemed like the source most likely to have avoided adopting additional folklore elements. The one place where I differed was on the bamboo ceiling decoration: The SFPE casts doubt there, due to some photographs of the stage that don't appear to show such decoration, but multiple direct witness reports do mention them, so I decided to include it. It's possible the SFPE is correct, though, and stories of bamboo decorations were added after the fact. 4) I will note that, while I do find the Beethoven explanation unconvincing, Jon Lord specifically was a pretty big classical guy, and although Blackmore leaned much more toward blues (which was one of the main conflicts in the band) it makes sense that he'd be thinking about classical stuff given who he was working with. I don't mean to imply that he _couldn't_ have been inspired by Beethoven, just that there's no evidence he would have needed to, given his blues background, and "he made it up as a joke" seems like a pretty solid explanation for why he told the interviewer that. 5) I'd like to thank Ethan Hein for bringing the Maria Moita connection to my attention. It happened pretty late in the video production process so I didn't have time to really dig in and figure out just how popular that particular song would have been in the UK at the time, and thus how likely it was that Blackmore had heard it, but… yeah, if it's a coincidence it's a pretty striking one. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to be a super well-known song, and as I demonstrated, it's easy to construct this riff from the blues scale and some basic principles of phrase structure, so it's certainly not impossible that Blackmore did just happen to have the same idea. However, it's also not the only time Blackmore's been accused of plagiarizing riffs, so I dunno, do what you want with that. (Although, if you asked me to bet, I'd say he probably heard Maria Moita. Occam's razor and whatnot, y'know?) 6) On that topic, here's a good video that goes into more detail about the question of Maria Moita: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9OnIRrrj-mY.html It's in Portuguese, but it has English subtitles available. 7) Despite drawing one, I'm not actually sure Lord's distortion came from a separate effect pedal. I suspect it was just in-amp distortion, but that's harder to draw and I didn't feel like the distinction mattered. 8) I missed an open hi-hat in bar 2 of the hi-hats-only drum layer. Whoops! 9) Similarly, I mistranscribed the walk-up at the start of Glover's intro part. the first three notes should be E-F-F#, not F-F#-G, I just typed it wrong in Musescore and didn't think to double-check it while filming. (Same with Glover's end fill in the verse.) 10) As evidence that Lord would play the first verse differently if he did another take, consider the fact that he did basically get two more takes of it in the other two verses of the song, and he did play those pretty differently. 11) Oh! Also, while, I'm correcting things, I think some of the Cs I notated in the Lake Geneva line might have been Dbs. They're sort of in between, honestly, and I think I defaulted to thinking in minor pentatonic, but they've definitely got some of that bluesy tritone thing going on. 12) I was torn on the explanation for the E in the chorus. On the one hand, "It's a blues thing" is not a particularly in-depth explanation, but on the other I didn't want to pretend it was particularly unusual in that stylistic context. It's an important part of the song's sound so I wanted to highlight it, but it also felt important to stress that it was borrowing from a known tradition, rather than serving as a unique innovation by Gillan or Deep Purple. 13) Melodyne really struggled with that D major voicing. Definitely still some F naturals somewhere in that chord. (It's built by transposing the C minor part from the previous bar. I tried making it out of the Ab voicing but it sounded so much worse.)

and a thousand guitar center workers cried out in agony.

I had no idea how ENORMOUS that organ sound is on the chorus (assuming it was a guitar). Absolutely killer.

5:14 "This correction is pedantic and unnecessary, but I'll get yelled at if I don't include it." I think you just perfectly summed up fandom culture in the social media age in one sentence lmao

About a decade or so ago, our band decided to play this on a lark. Then we did a deep dive of it and discovered what an interesting and well-structured song it really is. You pulled even more fine details than we did, awesome analysis. Bravo! 👍

the bass part is the unsung hero of this track!

As a kid in the '70's, I heard Smoke on the Water a lot (and learned the iconic riff on our Farfisa organ), but of course I hadn't the foggiest idea what the song was about. Given the heavy sound and apocalyptic lyrics of the chorus, I vaguely assumed it was something about the horrors of war. I was amused when, decades later, I realized it was fundamentally about trying to record an album under difficult circumstances.

I'm appreciate you coming clean to us about deciding not to do sponsorship anymore. Your honesty was touching. I can't afford to support you on Patreon, but I'll be here to watch and like your videos whenever I can.

Love the love for Roger Glover here. He's absurdly good at doing exactly what the song needs, a skill that's way less flashy than those of his other bandmates which makes it so that he's very underrated (both by fans and by himself). Man's a genius

I love that you have to remind people just what the riff to Smoke on the Water sounds like 🤣

People never believe me when I say this riff isn't picked. Spread the word, people.

I really liked that era of Purple. For a long time, Smoke on the Water was my favourite song.

One of my favorite things online is a video of a live performance of this song by a traditional Japanese band, I'm not sure what specific style it is. The opening riff on i think a shamisen, the audience recognizing it immediately and laughing, and then the whole group just goes harder than they have any right to, the vocals in multilayered harmony where its a bunch of shouting men knealt on the floor, it's astounding. I saw it on LiveLeak but i think there's some badly pirated copies on RU-vid.

Jon Lord really was one of a kind. There's nobody else who owned the rock organ as much as he did, and his tone is always so dirty and powerful.

I took years of piano lessons before I ever picked up the guitar… yet I never sat and listened to this song, solely focusing on the organ, until I watched this video. Thanks for clueing me in!!

I NEED the software used to separate the audio tracks here! The vocals were so clean, especially.

I turned, turned back, saw Garnet, then reminded and saw you draw her to illustrate "combined" and my heart swelled a bit

I know this is supposed to be Blackmore's masterpiece, but this really drives home how good Jon Lord really was.

The simple melodic outline of the riff may be why people remember this song, but the many layers of the arrangement are why we love it.

I love these videos so much. Can you please do one for “I Write Sins Not Tragedies?” I want to understand what makes that song so catchy and memorable.

14:26 "That's an E. He's singing an E" SMB: Perfection.

First song I ever learned on guitar as a kid. I felt like a GOD. I couldn't believe this sound was coming from my hands.

That is the most impressive breakdown of this song I've ever heard!!!

I love to see someone who appreciates all the fine details of this song like I do!

Classic jazz trick to to use a walking bass and groovy drums during the instrumental solo. Classic Purple to steal from the best.

One of my favourite bits of this song is the end of the last verse: "No matter what we get out of this / I know we'll never forget".

“That’s a G. Now play that … GGGGGG” I’ve seen School of Rock 12Tone. It helped understand this.

According to contemporary news accounts in Swiss newspapers, the fire was started when a Czech refugee of the Prague Spring named Zdenek Spicka shot a "pistolet d'alarme," a gun that only fires blanks, at the ceiling. I can totally understand why Deep Purple might remember it as a flare gun, especially if the only local news stories about the incident were in French.

The very first thing I thought was "I want him to draw a Zappa mustache!"

Absolutely love and appreciate your analysis of the guitar tone!

I'm only 5 minutes into this video, but already I'm loving so many of the drawings. The recreation of the "Who's Next" cover, the drawing of the Silence, and one of my favorite references, the drawing of Aphrodite's symbol from Hades to represent weakness

This is the type of song that might seem uninteresting because we've all heard it so many times, but there is a very good reason why it's still fun to listen to after decades.

I haven’t listened to song much since high school, and even then it fell out of my regular rotation as I found more stuff but coming back to this song in my 20s I can appreciate it a lot more with all the musical knowledge I’ve gained since then

The lead solo is one of the greatest in rock history, overshadowed by the iconic riff.

Something I've learned talking to both professional and amateur guitarists about this song and from having played it briefly in a cover band myself (on drums), despite being nearly synonymous with the guitar, Smoke on the Water is a more interesting song to perform on every other instrument lol The bass has such oomph and gives it so much power and groove. The drums are just so well played with incredible dynamics and sense of time. The keyboard is just plain weird. I'd argue the vocal line is one of the less interesting of Ian Gillan's performances on that album but its still got some of his good ole rock power to it. Dont get me wrong, Blackmore is an absolute GOAT of rock and metal guitar and his guitar work across the album and era is amazing, and that solo is just genuinely scorching every time I hear it, but I think the biggest reason Smoke caught on among guitarists because it's punchy and yet approachable.

Weed saves lives

You should do a video on "The End" by The Doors. I think it's an absolutely amazing song which is very underrated.

I know you probably get like millions of suggestions so this will probably be glossed over completely but it would be amazing if you covered Knights of Cydonia by Muse. It’s such a unique song and it has so many different parts and instruments that I think it would make a entertaining and fulfilling video!

The "square" sounding simpler version of the riff outlined around 5:55 sounds like another hard rock/metal/hair band song I remember from the '80s but I can't put my finger on it.

An excellent analysis, definitely gave me new insight into the song

I worked at my local music shop for 4 years, and even more so than just hearing the riff, I can’t believe how many customers would try and retell the Montreux Casino story. The song would play on the radio, and people would tell me the story as if they knew some amazing unknown information. “Literally ‘some stupid with a flare gun’ burned the place down!”. It’s like, “yeah dude everyone kinda knows that already!”. I’ll take hearing the riff any day than one more retelling of the story.

Damn near every famous riff Blackmore played - this, "Man on the Silver Mountain," "Kill the King" - is parallel fourths. The man hates power chords.

Dude you are so damn good to watch!

Could you do an analysis of Kashmir by Led Zeppelin?

Thank you for adding these extra details from this classic

For Lindsey Stirling fans, 17:33 may sound familiar! She uses *almost exactly* that fill in Roundtable Rival from her album "Shatter Me!"

Should do Highway Star

06:00 holy wtf. That's the Trigun riff when the title appears in the opening !! Why didn't I ever realized that.

Excellent content as usual, thxs for sharing 🐍

I think the real kicker of this riff is that the second and fourth phrases start an 8th note early but they don't "feel" like they do. The "borrowed" 8th note by the second bar for instance is payed back with the extra Bb note in phrase two leading to the start of the third phrase in bar 3 hitting straight on the one. Just listening to it it all seems in order but actually it isn't but you can't really tell unless you actually count it out. The rhythmic complexity is hidden. I call this the "Solsbury Hill/Mission Impossible effect". Solsbury Hill is in 7/4 but it doesn't sound like it is because the kick drum pattern is six quarter notes followed by two 8th notes. To the brain this sound like 8 kicks per two bar phrase, all present and correct, so it feels like straight up two bars of 4/4 per vocal line. But the vocal line and accompanying string riff gets that sense of urgency and forward momentum from this "lost" quarter note without sounding like there's anything "weird" going on. Mission Impossible riff does a similar thing by using two dotted and two straight quarter notes per bar for each 5/4 bar. "Nothing weird about this, mate, just four quarter notes per bar innit". I wish I could write a riff in an odd time signature/syncopation that didn't sound like it. Then I'd be rich and famous too 🤪

Drawing an amogus for sus chords is totally legit but also feels surreal for some reason xD

At around 3:20, you talk about them playing the notes on frets instead of using the open strings. This is kind of like how violinists, violists, cellists, et alia, almost never play on open strings. Open strings just sound wrong. They ring out like an echo, which is so different from how every other note sounds that you just can't use an open string. I'm not sure that the same is true for guitar, although I wouldn't be surprised if open strings are less common than one might assume. The reason is that guitars have frets, and the frets are supposed to make every note ring out like an open string. Having said that, which string a note is played on will still make some difference, just due to the weight of the string. It makes you wonder if he learned to play a non-fretted stringed instrument first and just kept by the no-open-string rule when he switched to guitar.

Amazing! I had never realized how complex this song was.

What a fantastic clip. Your channel is fantastic.

Great video!

This is great. Thank you! It's the first time I heard of the Bossa Nova being the possible source/origin/inspiration for that ultra famous riff. The resemblance is indeed uncanny😅. Love your drawings❤! Excellent illustrations to your explanations. This video once again shows me what value lies in knowing and mastering music theory. I admire people who can do it, for me personally that sphere is unfortunately locked and not accessible 😞. Nevertheless it's fascinating. That's why I like videos like yours and e.g. Rick Beato's.

The Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Truck wasn't just accidentaly "standing outside" in Montreux. It had to be driven-over from somewhere in France. Deep Purple didn't "find the Grand Hotel" to record at; it was Claude Nobs ("Funky Claude" in the song) that found the property. Nobs was responsible for tourism in Montreux at the time and later became the organiser of the "Montreux Jazz Festival". About the truck having to stay "outside", this means outside the Grand Hotel's perimeter since the truck didn't fit through the gates accessing the Grand Hotel's territory.

Hey, can/will you make a video on bittersweet symphony pleaaaase? 👀

wow, a song I know for years suddenly shows his secrets. thank you

Ritchie Blackmore!

The concept of "intermodulation" is very important for heavy metal bands that want to use chords that are lower than the tuning they're currently in. Bands like Slayer, Sylosis, I AM, Gojira, and Entombed often play parallel fifths on the bottom strings to create the illusion of downtuned chords that would otherwise need another low string to actually play.

Absolute classic

Great analysis: amazing what you hear when you got the Ears an Understandin - oh to be so gifted.

RU-vid recommended this to me - my first view of any of your postings. Very interesting, I've subscribed. Just curious - most of your "doodles" make sense but at 7:43 I had to really think about the almost empty tube of toothpase and ". . . seems worth mentioning." L O L And at 22:22 ". . . these videos take a really long time to make." much appreciated. I may have to "unretire" and become a patrion.

Thanks for explaining this! I was always wondering if they were talking about Lake Geneva, WI!

This is a great analysis!

my favorite arm on RU-vid

Shout out to Garnet!!!! Nice one.

4:00.....Usually muted notes on the guitar are done with the palm of the picking hand, not the fretting hand. Of course there are instances of both, and fretting hand do mute unneeded strings sometimes. But pick hand palm mutes are a big part of rock guitar.

Thanks for doing this song justice. I think so many people think about the opening riff as iconic and forget that the rest of the song has so much amazing stuff going on too. Personally, I just don't think anything with a Hammond organ is ever going to be a letdown.

4:44 "... and I think it sounds a lot weaker" as Cory draws thE APHRODITE SYMBOL FROM HADES??

I’ve seen video of Blackmore playing it with the open strings as well, but usually on the lower strings

great video!

In Blackmore’s guest column in guitar world years ago he said that on the record he played the main riff on the D & G strings. He also demonstrates it that way in the classic albums documentary (though on acoustic, & thumb plucking low Gs in between the chords). Though, yeah, most of the time he frets them live… except for when he’s doing the “playing with your fretting hand upside down” thing he likes to do… then it’s usually back to the middle strings

There is a great swing version by Robyn Adele Anderson that totally follows the bossa nova version ...

how do you isolate these instruments so well and clean? it's amazing

Thank you.

My understanding is that Lord is the one who came up with the outline of the main riff, in the middle of a jam session, and then Blackmore massaged it into its final form. If that's true, then Blackmore's claims of trying to do Beethoven backwards are even more silly.

Ritchie actually played out on the 10 and 12 fret on the d and g string ...

Gotta throw you some love on the silence motif! Dr. Who fandom rise up!! ✌️

Oh god, I've been playing a much harder version of the bassline for no good reason. Instead of octaves, I was doing power chord arpeggios, that gets painful after a while.

I always heard this riff more like Beethoven's 5th than like blues, though never heard Blackmore's apology. Thank you!

A Dr Who reference The Silence!

I want this guy to break down “Golden Brown” by the Stranglers.

The most important fire in rock history might actually have been the one which engulfed the plane carrying The Allman Brothers

I am just starting to learn music, this is so complicated, I wish I'd be able to understand it someday

Over the past several years we've seen a lot of stories about one artist making dubious claims that another stole their song. By now I would hope that we've learned to be skeptical of those claims and want to give the accused artist the benefit of the doubt, especially with a riff as simple as this, and not let that skepticism be bypassed by a politically convenient narrative.

I read somewhere that Steve Morse had set that when he listened to the song to learn it and he realised that the room's natural resonance is a G.

Finally, someone points out it isn't 035. A and D strings, first finger and thumb to pick the notes...

The "attitude" of it is a lot of the mystery of the song for me. So much of it was coded in half-said phrases like like calling the Mothers of Invention "Mothers" and "pulling kids out the ground" made it hard to parse what was going on, and the way they mispronounce words to make them fit like "Mantreaux" turning into "mantra" further confuses it. I do understand the music takes precedence over conveying information, but this seemed like some complex metaphor I just wasn't getting. Instead, it turned out to be a relatively straightforward telling of a weird experience they had spoken in the band's unique interpretation of the relaxed lingo of kids of the 70s. And much like the "radical" and "tubular" nonsense from when I was young, the words don't convey as well as they once did. The power of the music lasts, but the story it told fades into the realm of things mostly known from a Wikipedia article. I honestly don't know how I feel about that. The story is honestly only really important because of the music that came out of it, so the fact that the music outlives knowing what the hell they're talking about is appropriate, but it also makes me question how many try to say music's job is to convey emotion. This conveys an emotion, but it seems disconnected from the story now that I know what they're talking about. And yet it's undeniably a powerful song.

IDK if you'll see this but this is the latest video but here goes... i opened YT and went to your channel looking for Echo beach breakdown,.. sad to find that it didn´t exist.

Respect.

The Zappa/Mothers show can be found on the Swiss Cheese/Fire bootleg (as part of one of the Beat the Boots box sets).

5:45 - Came here to learn about Smoke on the Water, ended up rediscovering the Trigun theme.

i've never clicked on a video so fast. Great job!

Would love to see you cover 'I believe in a thing called love' by The Darkness

I've only recently started listening to this track on a regular basis because I put it on a playlist, and I've noticed two things. 1. I don't find the lyrics terribly impressive. The story is interesting, but the words are more than a little clumsy. The music itself and the energy of it really make it work. 2. "Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry has a lot in common with this song, both in structure and concept.

The whole actually it's an organ feels like "jigglypuff as seen from above"

Great analysis👍 I'm sure Ritchie played the riff 55-33-55 starting on the A and D strings. Interesting to note though if you look at the 8mm cine film of Blackmore playing the riff in the intro during the live Made In Japan concerts, he starts the riff on the E and A strings so the tab would be 1010-88-1010. Same key as the record just a different tone.