With the Nashville Number System, the number chart represents the chord progression of the song.

With traditional printed music, the kind with lines and little black notes on sheets of paper, everything you are supposed to played is written on the paper and you play it just like it is written. Again, this is very Important, so please pay attention. It’s all done with number charts.Ī number chart for the Bob Segar classic “Old Time Rock and Roll” would look like this:ĭid the number chart above to “Old Time Rock and Roll” surprise you? Some musicians are caught off guard by how simple it is when they first see one. There are no pieces of paper with lines and little black notes on them. All the parts we hear in the music we love is created this way, right there on the spot. Then they record the song, each creating their part based on the number chart the just made. Studio musicians will listen to a demo recording of the song to be recorded and write out their own number chart as the sound engineer plays it from the control room. This numerical approach to music is the language professional musicians use to communicate everyday in Nashville and other music centers live and in the recording studio. You can in turn, use this formula to create the major scale in any key. I also said in my Guitar Number System we will note it with numbers, 2-2-1-2-2-2-1. If you will remember, the formula for the major scale traditionally is whole step, whole step, half step, then 3 more whole steps and another half step, sometimes noted W-W-H-W-W-W-H. In the last lesson, I talked about half steps and whole steps and how in certain orders, I call formulas, can be used to create chords and scales. The major scale using the Nashville Number System would be 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. With this system, the scale degrees of the major scale, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, are changed to numbers. Charlie McCoy, A Nashville session musician and music leader of the Hee Haw television show, took what Matthews created and, together with some of his recording session friends came up with the system musicians use today.įor musicians, the Nashville Number System is a chord charting system that makes charting and transposing keys easier and quicker. When Neil Matthews created the original Nashville Number System in the late 1950’s, he was looking for a way to help he and the other members of the Jordanaires, Elvis Presley’s Vocal Backup Group, learn vocal parts more quickly.

There are some differences but I will point those out as we go along. The Nashville Number system is the greatest thing ever invented for the working musician. My name is Leland and I’m on the development team along with Chas.Thanks in advance to NVSongwriter for this excellent article. You can keep your version and be notified when an update has been made. If you’re not happy with the app, we will issue a full refund of your purchase price and insure your issues are reviewed and fixed. Please give feedback of a 5 star review, or contact us directly. This innovative app brings the must-read instructional book by Chas Williams, with well over 50,000 copies sold, into our digital age by seamlessly allowing charts to be written on your iPad! The published book has become required reading in many of the most prestigious music schools, including Belmont, ETSU, Lee and Liberty University, while also being required reading for anyoneīefore they get their first gig in music city.

Forget about pencil, erasers and photocopy! This app combines technology with tried and tested methods allowing user to create song charts with the ease and speed of pen and paper.įor over 60 years, the Nashville Number System has been the standard for musicians in live performance, recording sessions, and teaching environments. Music notation is made simple with this shorthand system which puts chords into numbers 1 through 7 and streamlines the page into a simple and clean format.

Nashville number system chart pdf