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6.4.4 What is the Nashville Number System? Chord Notation for the Rest of Us
The Nashville Number System is a system of chord notation developed in Nashville, Tennessee. A lot of session players in Nashville do not read music, so they use this system of "chord shorthand."
The Nashville Number System originated in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Starting in the 1950s, Nashville players began adapting it for their own needs. Now everybody knows it as the Nashville Number System.
The System is based on the chords of the seven harmonic degrees (Tables 38 and 39 above). The Nashville Number System makes it possible for any player to play the correct chords of a song in any key, simply by numbering the chords according to their harmonic degrees.
The advantage?
Once a lead or lyric sheet is notated using the Nashville Number System, performers can use it to play or sing the song in any key. Players do not have to re-notate lead sheets every time someone wants to perform the song in a different key. Which happens an awful lot.