The Nashville Number System straight from Nashville

The Nashville Number System is not just a musical trick that some musicians in some remote area of ​​the country occasionally use. It’s THE musical language professional musicians use in Nashville and other music capitals every day in the recording studio and live on stage. In the late 1950s, Neil Matthews (1929-2000) of the Jordonaires, Elvis Presley’s backup vocal group took up the concept of shape notes and developed the first version of the Nashville Number System. Nashville session ace Charlie McCoy and his musician friends further developed it into the version used by professional musicians today. You may remember Charlie from the TV series Hee Haw which ran from 1969 to 1997. For a more detailed article on the Nashville number system, check out the link at the bottom.

To understand this system, you must first understand the major scale. If you need help understanding major scale, just follow the link in my resource box. The major scale is made up of 7 different notes, 8 counting the octave, which is a repetition of the first note, 8 degrees higher. In the Nashville number system, each note, also called a scale degree, is assigned an Arabic numeral to replace the letter name of the alphabet. In the key of C, for example, the major scale is CDEFGAB and finally the eighth C. In the Nashville Number System, the scale becomes 1-2-3-4-5-6-7.

Chords are then built from each degree of the scale. In traditional music theory, we are taught that in a major scale, chords 1, 4, and 5 are major, chords 2, 3, and 6 are minor, and chord 7 is diminished. I learned playing in Nashville that in modern popular music, any of the 7 scale degrees can be any of the four types of chords in music, major, minor, augmented, or diminished. This, and the fact that Arabic numerals are used and not Roman numerals, are two ways in which the Nashville number system differs.
of traditional music theory.

The other thing you need to know is how to form the different types of chords. Briefly, using the C scale above, a major chord is formed with 1, 3, and 5, the minor chord is formed with 1, b3, and 5, an augmented chord uses 1, 3, and #5, and the diminished chord is 1, b3 and b5. Extended chords, like 6th, 9th, and 13th chords, simply add additional notes to one of these four basic chord types. Suspended chords simply move the third scale degree up a half step toward the fourth and then resolve back to the third scale degree.

These are the basics of the Nashville number system. If you need more help, just follow the link at the bottom of the page. Good luck and God bless you. Keep an eye out for another article on using the Nashville number system and reading number charts, coming soon to a stage or studio near you.