Killing Me Softly by Roberta Flack

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TGNeil
Posts: 990
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:09 pm
Status: Online

Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:13 pm

Hey Folks,

I thought I had done this lesson years ago but somehow my memory fabricated it. Luckily, a student asked me about Killing Me Softly recently and I was surprised to see that a TG lesson on it was only in my imagination. We now have the real thing. We did add the Solo Arrangement lesson recently as well.

Neil



Killing Me Softly was a huge hit for Roberta Flack in 1973, but hers was a cover of the original done by Lori Lieberman in 1971. It was Lori's notes on thoughts she had while watching Don MacLean perform, which were then passed on to lyricist Norman Gimbel, then further to Charles Fox, who wrote the music, that really was the genesis of the tune. Roberta's arrangement and vocal improvising took the basic folk song to a completely different level.

This lesson starts with the chord progression and presents a 'Campfire' version using a simple strumming pattern, but then also goes into the intro vamp (played by guitarist Eric Gale) and a more advanced fingerstyle accompaniment version.