Nashville Charts

So I recently saw mention of Nashville Charting. Looked on wikipedia and they have the definition but don't do much in the way of explaning it or showing how to read/write.

Could someone familiar with it explain it somewhat at length? (Enough to be able to at least read the charts). I know some about music theory and can read sheet music.

Thanks very much.

Instead of using Roman numerals (as in trad theory), use good ole fashioned numbers (1, 2, 3 etc). There's a bit more to it, but that's the essential nature of it. It's not too different from trad theory, except that no one reads standard notation while doing it (someone usually sets up the charts before the studio sessions).

I'd google Nashville Numbering System, which may get you more hits that Nashville Charting.

Yeah I googled that and it just pulled up some books on it. I didn't see any articles or anything that I could just read. I'll check again, thanks.

It's really simple. Each number is assign to each scale tone. So in C:

1C

2D

3E

4F

5G

6A

7B

What I don't like is that you need to say 2m if you mean Dm. Dm would naturally be the typical ii chord. But in Nashville you spell it out regardless. So a 2 is a D major chord. So you write what you play and play what you read.

57? G7... and so on.

1

On top of old

4

smokey, all covered in

1

Snow. I lost my true

57

sweetheart for courtin' too

1

slow

Big ending:

4 4m 5 57...

1

I just read a reference to this in a book, wasn't quite sure what it was. I did have a little hunch, and now I see that I got the gist of it right.

When you say it out loud, you just read the numbers. So like in the above example (old smokie), you'd say the verse goes:

1-4-1-5-1

or sometimes they combine it like 14-15-1 (fourteen, fifteen, one) or something like that