bass chord progressions in “Killing me softly”

Question

This is kind of a follow up question to this question I have trancribes the bass line:

The chords are: G7(no 3) - G - C - F- Dm - G - Am - A(single note)

Which in roman numeral (if the scale is A minor) is: VII7 - VII - III - VI - IV - VII - I

Is what I did correct? If so, is this a known chord progression? I thought that after the seventh degree you should go to the tonic but here it's not the case. Why is that?

Answer 1

Like Babu mentioned, the second note in the first bar should be an A.

Depending on how you look at it, your are actually in either A minor or C major. In terms of C major (which is what I think it should be, locally), what you have is

II V I IV II V VI VI

(Note that this is actually from the bridge section of the song, and it doesn't end on the root chord. But if you actually look at the whole tune, the chord analysis is a lot more complicated.)

In the actual song, this section is followed by Dm G7 C E7, the first three is again the II V I, but the E7 functions as a Dominant turn-around (the V chord) leading back to the head, which begins on Am, which is the key of the actual song.

Answer 2

I'm sure that there are other people who are better at digging chords out from bass lines, but I'm pretty sure you scored this in d minor. The bass line sounds very odd without the Bb. Try humming the melody along with it; it really doesn't fit, especially when you hit measure 2. Also, I think you have a typo in measure 1; that G really should be an A. Putting a 4th in that type of bassline really makes it sound wonky.

I also say D minor because otherwise the chords, like you noted, are weird as hell. Assuming that we're in d minor, we've got: dm gm C F dm gm am am ,or I IV VII III I IV V V, which makes a little more sense musically. If you want to look at it from the relative major (F major), then things really start meshing; you've got VI II V I VI II III III, and the II-V-I turn is a very common jazz progression.

Finally, assuming that this is the chorus, that last A should probably be a Bb. Just as a hint to help you work out the really odd jumps that are about to come along.

Good luck with the rest of it, and keep it up! Training your ear like this is very very difficult (I did it myself). But over time (maybe a year, if you do it off and on like I did), you'll develop your ear to the point where you can hear a song and immediately start banging out a fair approximation of it!