You might try altering the order of your steps. Everything flows out of the chords so that is the place to start IMO. Once you know the key, you can go through the most common chord progressions construction first. A huge number of songs use the I,IV,V progression so that is usually where I start. Then I look for relative minor substitutions, then once you have the main chords down look for passing chords used and any outside chords. The melody passes through the chords and most strong melodies follow them pretty closely. Same with the bass walking from chord to chord. Just my way of looking at it. Hope that helps .BTW those are the same steps you need to do to jam over a tune.
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