Lesson 72 Video

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Lesson 72

Lesson 72 - Killing Me Softly

Killing Me Softly with His Song

 

Lesson Goals:

♦ Review the "minor" barre chord "E" shape 
♦ Review the "minor" barre chord "A" shape
♦ Play "Killing Me Softly with His Song"

In this lesson we will play the 1973 mega-hit "Killing Me Softly with His Song" sung by Roberta Flack. This is one of the truly great songs of the time and a good one to have under your belt.

There are a number of chord changes in this song and some chords are played as a minor chord in one section, then as a major chord in another so you will have to really pay attention going through this one.

Although there are a lot of chord changes it will be a lot more manageable to split the song into two sections, the chorus section, and the verse section.

Once you have those down it is just a matter of repeating everything.

Let's take a look at the chart for this song.

 

72 killing me softly 01

The song begins with the chorus on an Em chord which is played up at the 7th fret.

Note that the second chord is an A minor, but the second chord of the 3rd measure is an A major.

Get familiar with the changes then we can go over it in the video.

Lesson 72 Summary

Play this song strumming the rhythm with your pick to begin with. Then try an experiment. Put the pick down and play the song just using finger picking. It would be a great way to get your fingers used to the feel of finger picking. You probably have noticed that you can also play this song using quite a lot of open chords if you want to take a break from barre chords.

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Jam Tip!

On most of the recordings we came across this song was sung in the key of Fminor. In the key of Fm most of the chords would have been flats or sharps so we decided, for the sake of simplicity to transpose the song to E minor. If you would like a good challenge, see if you can transpose the song back to Fm. All you would do is to move the first chord (Em) up one fret to make it Fm. Then do the same thing with all the other chords in the progression. Give it a try!

Em (barre chord)

 72 em bar pic

Am (barre chord)

69 am bar pic