Get your musicians familiar with hearing you say numbers instead of chords. Practice until the numbers for each key start to get in your craw.Īfter a few weeks, this will start to be a huge game changer. Now, take a few songs that are very familiar to you and change the chords to the numbers in the chart below. Then, start trying to play the song, just based on the numbers in a few other keys. Simply play the chords as numbers, in the same spots as the others. The D is the 1, the G is the 4, the A is the 5, and the Bm is the 6m. Now, as an exercise, print out the chart and use white out to change the G chord to the number 1 (which is the same thing as the Roman numeral I), the C chord to the number 4 (IV), D to the number 5 (V), and Em to 6m (vi – lower case means the chord is minor rather than major).ĭone? Now play the song, memorizing the numbers rather than the chords. Study the chart above as you read this next part.įirst if a song is in the key of G, and you see the G (I), the C (IV), the D (V), and the Em (vi), you have your chords. I won’t get into all the details here, but if you know these chords for one key, in your head, you are ready to go. The I chord (1), IV chord (4), V chord (5), and vi (6m) chord are the most common.
In my world of worship music, this is often the case. Many songs are fairly simple in their chord structure. Each chord in a key has a number assigned to it.
I’ve created a very basic version of it for handing out to your teams to get you started– here is the PDF Download of the NNS Chart. Musicians all over my city use the NNS in the studio and in live settings to communicate musical changes quickly. There is a better way, and it’s called The Nashville Number System (NNS). The Nashville Number System: A Basic Approach
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If you’re not happy with the app, we will issue a full refund of your purchase price (in exchange for not writing a bad review) and insure your issues are reviewed and fixed. Please give feedback of a 5 star review, or contact us directly. This innovative app brings the must-read instructional book by Chas Williams, with well over 50,000 copies sold, into our digital age by seamlessly allowing charts to be written on your digital device! The published book has become required reading in many of the most prestigious music schools, including Belmont, ETSU, Lee and Liberty University, while also being required reading for anyone when they get their first gig in music city. Forget about pencil, erasers and photocopy! This app combines technology with tried and tested methods allowing users to create song charts with the ease and speed of pen and paper.įor over 60 years, the Nashville Number System has been the standard for musicians in live performance, recording sessions, and teaching environments. Music notation is made simple with this shorthand system which puts chords into numbers 1 though 7 and streamlines the page into a simple and clean format.