If they use identical arrangements, the same Nashville number chart of I Saw the Light would work for both Dolly’s and Johnny’s performance. A chart’s numbers maintain their same relationship with a song’s chord changes regardless of the key.įor example, if Dolly Parton sings I Saw the Light in the key of C, Johnny Cash might have sung the same song lower, in the key of G. One of the main benefits of a number chart is that it can be played in any key without transposing or rewriting the chart into a different key. It was not the way we usually made music,” Harold said. He strummed the guitar and we wrote down the chords, and then later on he wrote the words. He came out after about an hour or so of us sitting around. “That was the only way we’d work with the Monkee’s because the guy hadn’t written the song. Harold said,”Once, Vicki Carr came and looked over my shoulder and said, ’You guys aren’t in the music business, you’re in the numbers business.” Back then, sometimes they didn’t write the same chords to each verse.” But I found out when I became leader that it saved you 15 minutes a session if you could do the charts before the session. I walked away thinking,’well what’s this?’ because we were used to memorizing it. I went over and said, ‘What are you guys doing?’ They said,’Well, we’re writing this down.’ Charlie had studied at the University Of Miami and that’s what they were doing was writing down the number system. I looked over and Wayne had a little bitty small pad and he was writing, and Charlie McCoy was over there working with him. One day we had a substitute we had Wayne Moss. This innovative number system has become the standard method of music notation in Nashville.įrom a conversation with Harold Bradley, he said,” The A team was memorizing all the stuff. Musicians used the number system to chart out an entire song on one piece of paper while hearing a demo of the tune for the first time. The idea of substituting numbers for chord letters quickly spread among the other session players in Nashville. Charlie was doing a lot of sessions with Wayne Moss, David Briggs, Harold Bradley, Bob Moore, Pete Wade, Ray Edenton and Grady Martin. So, Charlie applied Neal’s number system to chords and the rhythm section. In the early 60’s Charlie McCoy noticed the unique approach that Neal and the Jordanaires used to map out a song on paper. He began writing vocal charts substituting numbers for the shape notes and developed his own system of writing music with numbers. Working several recording sessions a day forced Neal to devise a method of writing vocal parts so that the Jordanaires wouldn’t have to commit tremendous amounts of material to memory. Neal said he was familiar with the system of shape notes used by gospel quartets in the 30’s and 40’s, which used a different shape for each note of the major scale. However, around 1957, Neal Matthews, a member of the Jordanaires, originated the idea of substituting regular numbers for notes. Since the middle ages, musicians have substituted Roman numerals for chord letters. Rhythmic and dynamic notations, as well as chord voicing symbols from formal music are used in conjunction with symbols developed uniquely by Nashville musicians. Nashville chord charts substitute numbers for the chord letter symbols found in traditional music notation. THE NASHVILLE NUMBER SYSTEM is a method of transcribing music so that a song can be understood and performed.
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