What is the Nashville Number System you may ask? It is a common music chord “language” that, I assume, developed in Nashville in the recording industry.
In my own music circles we have been using this lingo already… and I never really knew what it was “officially” called, only that it was rather universal among serious musicians and could be found in modern instrumental instructional manuals. The system allows chord progressions in music to be expressed in key-less terms, using numbers and their relative position from each other to express the chords in a progression of music in a given key. For example, in the key of C, instead of saying that a progression is C – G – Am – F you would call this 1 – 5 – 6 – 4, or using the sometimes alternate Roman Numeral variant, I – V – vi – IV. Dig?
I'm a Christ-follower, compelled by my faith toward reason, which points directly toward conservatism. This world's daily onslaught of lunacy offends my intellect and senses, so this is my venue to blow off steam.
whoever explained it did it well. I am a 16 year, i played music all of my life, i am leaving in nashville, tn playing with some mean guitar players, rick mcrae, mike crosno, and some others, but what i getting at u really need to stress to people to learn scales. Maybe the modes thats a joke have fun.
Umm… I’m not exactly sure of everything you were saying. but it sounds right.
I’ve found that learning scales is indispensible when you want to be a competent lead player. You need to know where to go in any key and you need to know what chord shapes and voicings will fit into your progression. The Nashville system helps, too, because you don’t get stuck having to think of this in terms of specific notes and keys… just relative positions.
Today I found your website, I will go there often. It is so informing. Thanks
We use this at the studio all the time to produce mind numbing tv background tracks. Since we do about 4 tracks a day, we just started coding number progressions for certain feels. If we are doing a thriller track we use 4 or five progressions in different modes. It really speeds us up.
Surprised to see this being called the Nashville number system as it is seen in books and notation from around the World.
This is cool! I’ve been playing for a few years and am just learning the notation, this makes way more sense to me than trying to memorize all the other stuff! So that it’s interchangeable across the keys! Thanks!
Wow, this is the first time I have seen such interpretation of a chord chart. It may be quite difficult to understand at first glance but it’s actually easy when you get the grasp of it. I’m surprised.
“Surprised to see this being called the Nashville number system as it is seen in books and notation from around the World.”
What books have you seen this in b/c I have been looking for it for my wife and have failed miserably so far to find a beginner book with the Nashville system in it?
I’ve seen this in music books but I didn’t know that this is called Nashville Number System. I think mastering this system will make you an excellent musician since this is the foundation of music…
The chord chart is quite complicated for me. Nevertheless, I would want to learn its flow thoroughly. This is truly a great stuff!
Yes, this is the Nashville numbering system, but it’s only a part of it. The full NNS is a standardized way of not only denoting harmonic intervals, but also a shorthand for all sorts of dynamics and effects used in commercial music. So basically it’s more than just a notation that allows easy transposition between keys.
That is quite confusing when you first look at it. Nashville is a great place for music though and they would be able to come up with this.
I seem confused how to interpret the chart. If I’m not mistaken you are going to play those chords through the numbers. Quite a challenge.