A lot of people don't realize this, but computers and music are closely tied together. Meaning many times, people who have a natural gift for music, also have a natural gift for computers. It's all about patterns and symbols.
I had dinner with some of my new found friends and we got to talking about music and songwriting and he mentioned that he was trying to learn the "Nashville Number System". I was fortunate that when I was a young piano student, I had a teacher that taught me the Number System very early on (I was probably 14 or so). So, it's something that I've used for years. I mentioned it was pretty easy, but after I said that I realized he was a guitar player and I learned it on the piano. The piano is a much easier instrument than the guitar for learning chords than the guitar, so I now see that my "It's pretty easy" comment may have come across as arrogant, but it's just a perspective thing.
I invited him to come over and I would him what I know about it, then as I was sitting here alone, I thought "Why not blog about it and teach more than just one person?" So, here we go....
First, What is the Nashville Number System? For this, I let Wikipedia do the talking...
The Nashville Number System is an informal method of transcribing music by denoting the scale degree on which a chord is built. It was developed by Neil Matthews in the late '50s as a simplified system for the Jordanaires to use in the studio and further developed by Charlie McCoy. The system is similar to the Roman numeral system traditionally used to transcribe a chord progression, but more typically uses Arabic numerals and does not explicitly state the quality (e.g., major or minor) of the chord. By writing chords as numbers, music may be transposed easily. As a simple system of transcription, it can be used with only a rudimentary background in music theory, and may not be as intimidating to learn for musicians unfamiliar with traditional notations. If a set of musicians has basic familiarity, improvisation and jam sessions can be quickly explained using numbers, and chord changes can be communicated mid-song by holding up the corresponding number of fingers. The system is flexible, and can be embellished to include more information (such as chord color or to denote a bass note in an inverted chord) as the user desires.
If you look at any popular sheet music, you are very likely to see chord symbols above the melody line. These are denoted by the root note and a chord quality. You will see symbols like C Em Am and so forth. Guys like me who don't read music use these to 'Fake' the progression behind the melody. There have been many times (when I was younger) that I would backup a singer and that is all I had to go one. In this situation you read the chords and fly by the seat of your pants. You do it long enough, you can feel comfortable with it and make it sound pretty good.
The problem comes when the singer hands you a chord chart and says "here's the song, but that key is (too high, too low, too hot, too cold, too something). At that point you have to see one thing and translate it into a different key all within the very limited time provided by the beat of a song. It can be done (some do it very well) but sight transposition is difficult.
Thus the Nashville Number System was born. Using the Number System, numbers are used instead of Chord names and the translation is much simpler. Here's how it works:
I Know That This Is Basic, But It's Kind Of Crucial
As you know, music is composed of notes and notes are typically used from a particular scale (or key) There are many many many types of scales, but the Number System is based on the major scale so we will limit this discussion to that.
The major scale is based on a pattern of intervals (or steps) a half step is playing notes that are right next to each other, a whole step has a note in between.
The major scale has the following pattern
whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half
Start with any key on the keyboard, and follow this pattern and you've played the major scale in that key. In the diagram, there are two scales represented. The C scale has 'all white notes', but if you look you will see the pattern mentioned above. The D scale, contains 'black notes' at tones 3 and 7. But if you look at the pattern above, you will see that it still fits.
What the number system does is just say, instead of using the note names, let's refer to the chords by their numbers on the major scale. Wyen you do this for a little while, you begin to be able to translate the number to the scale tone quickly. The number simply refers to the position on the major scale of the key you are playing in.
We are dealing with triads though, what are the other notes?
In most case the other notes fall on the major scale also. The triad built on the first tone of the scale is going to include tones 1 3 5 from the scale. The chord built on the second tone is going to include tones 2 4 and 6 the chord built on the third tone of the scale is going to include 3 5 7 and so forth. When you get into the upper half of the scale, you just extend the same scale for another octave and maintain the same pattern. The chord built on the 6 will contain tones 6 8 10.
This is the basis of the Number System, there is a bunch more to talk about, but I've probably bored you enough already.
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