What’s this progression?

Cranky

digitalkettle said:

The
E: 
B:
G:
in the OP was the giveaway!

That part only compounded my confusion.  Especially when E B and G became F#min F#min/maj7 and F#min7.  In hindsight I see it, but all I could see then was “top strings” and “5-5-5-5”.

viz

digitalkettle said:

The
E: 
B:
G:
in the OP was the giveaway!

I first assumed he’d just misspelled:

Bm7(3rd inv)
Bmaj7 and
Cm7(3rd inv)

Tannin

Following this discussion with interest. As always, @viz's contributions are particularly valuable. 

It is a pleasing coincidence that for the last week or two I've been working on very much the same thing, albeit in A rather than F#.

We start in A minor
x0755x (Or you can sound the 1st string open, or fret it on 5 - any of the three is fine. For current purposes I'll just ignore it,.)
x0655x
x0555x
x0455x
(insert bass motif from the tune, on the low string, E G A, and start the next stanza)
x0555x
x0455x
x0355x
x03230 (a D minor over A, but also functions as an Aaug sus4, which is handy because it sets us up to resolve to A major)
x02220

After we have played around on the A major for a while (usually doing the old x02220 x04230 x05230 A  to D thing - cue Free and half of everything else you ever heard in that era)  we do the same idea in A major:

x02220 A
x02120 Amaj7
x02020 A7 and resolve to:
x04230 D add2 (1st inversion) or if you prefer x54230 (which is a plain Dadd2 and a cow of a thing to hit first grab on the fly. I'm still working on that!