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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: https://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: https://youtu.be/9OnIRrrj-mY 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.)

@GregMcNeish

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

@cjbattlechaser4987

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

@GhabrielPeper

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.

@Rubrickety

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.

@NinerFourWhiskey

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! 👍

@thejamnasium6447

the bass part is the unsung hero of this track!

@rizzo_grt

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

@Insert_Bland_Name_Here

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

@gaffer2602

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

@room34

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.

@Taschenschieber

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".

@chrisburgess4959

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!!

@Taschenschieber

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.

@AlRoderick

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 YouTube.

@CaptainTedStryker

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

@justinvzu01

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

@tomy8339

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

@delroyopondo

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

@krisfrederick5001

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.