I have been playing for about 8 years and most of my time has been spent on books, theory, scales, chords and their realtionships etc. Funny enough I am also in a real playing rut just now, I have found the majority of things like Hendrix, Nirvana amongst a few of todays new acts really easy to work out by ear and spent alot of time analysing the things that make these sort of artists songs great as I write my own material but recently I have been frustrated as I want to be able to work out flashy/lenghthy solos used by bands like Aerosmith, Led Zepplin and GNR oh and Queen. The chords are easy to work out but I feel as if I can work out the solos that are slower or more melodically definded, but find it so hard to pick out the notes when someone like Slash goes into a fast flurry, and I know on record some artists multitrack and overdub parts making it hard to hear. My problem is it gets very boring constsantly rewinding th CD just to get a few seconds of flurried action at a time especially if the solo passage flys all over the place and lasts for more than 30 seconds, I just shut off. Does anyone know a good way to tackle this in terms of practising and for people going out playing these songs as covers I was wondering do most people just improvise during these sorts of tricky moments just using signature licks form the song to carry the tune, cause I thought this might be a solution? I know certainly alot of artists choose not to perform the song exactly as the recorded version because it would be too exhausting to try and remember the big runs and solos when they are good at improvising something that fits the chords.