Chording

What is the Nashville Number System?

The Nashville Number System is the greatest thing ever invented for the working musician. The

principles are basically the same. There are some differences that will be pointed out later.

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. Charlie McCoy, a Nashville’s greatest session

harmonica player and music leader of the Hee Haw television show, took what Neil Matthews

created and, together with some of his recording session friends came up with the system used

today.

For musicians, the Nashville Number System is a chord charting system that makes charting and

transposing keys easier and quicker. With this system, the scale degrees of the major scale,

C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, are changed to numbers. The major scale using the Nashville Number System would

be: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.

Start making all your charts with numbers

So what’s so great about the Nashville Number System? The above story gives a little history; now

let’s look at ways musicians use it when playing live.

For bands and groups like us playing in clubs around town, we can expect anybody to drop in to join

us in song.(Risky Venture) If someone in our group doesn’t know the song, they can either leave to

get another drink or pull out their handy number chart. The other option is that someone

knowledgeable can hold up their fingers to indicate the chord number to be played.

Let’s say that I’ve gotten brave and have decided to lead our group in a Willie Nelson song. I inform

the group and the bass player pulls out his handy number chart for “Blue Eyes Crying the Rain” which

was originally recorded in “G”. Whoa-up here guys, I’m not Willie Nelson, and can we lower the key

to “D”.

No problem, the bass player knows that he can use the same chart because it is written in numbers

not letters. All he has to do is mentally transpose the song applying the numbers to the new key.

That’s the beauty of the Nashville Number System.

Check out and copy these two pages on the Nashville Number System !!!