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The Nashville Number System

A way of writing a song down so that it works in any key. Instead of chord letters, you write the degree of the scale — and the same page then serves the singer who wants it in G and the one who wants it in B♭.

The whole idea, in four bars

Number the notes of a major scale one to seven. In C that makes C the 1, F the 4 and G the 5. Write the numbers instead of the letters and the chart stops belonging to one key.

In C this is C – F – G – C. In G it is G – C – D – G. Same chart.

That is the entire system. Everything below is shorthand for things a band needs to agree on: how long a chord lasts, how it is played, and where the song goes next.

Minor chords

In any major key, the 2, 3 and 6 chords are minor when they come from the scale itself. A small m after the number says so. Some charts use a dash instead — 6- rather than 6m — and both are read the same way.

1 – 6m – 2m – 5. In C: C – Am – Dm – G.

NNScharts stores the meaning, not the mark. Set your preference under “Read it your way” on any chart and every chart in the library will use it, whichever way its author writes.

How long a chord lasts

One number in a bar means the chord fills the bar. Two numbers separated by a line split it evenly — half each in 4/4.

The middle bar is two beats of 4 and two beats of 5.

When a split is not even, hash marks under the numbers say how many beats each chord gets. This is the distinction a split line alone cannot make: three beats of 1 and one beat of 5 is different music from two and two, and without the marks they look identical.

Three beats of 1, then one beat of 5.

How a chord is played

Two marks cover most of what a rhythm section needs to be told, and they are opposites.

A diamond: hit the chord and let it ring through the bar.

A marcato: hit it and stop it dead.

A push means the chord arrives early — ahead of the beat it belongs to, usually by an eighth note. It is one of the most common marks on a real chart and one of the most argued about.

The 4 arrives an eighth note before the downbeat of that bar.

On push marks. There are two coherent readings in the wild. Under one, the marks point in the direction of the push. Under the other, >is standard notation’s accent borrowed for “lean on this one”, carrying no direction at all — which is why Chas Williams uses > for the early push and names no late counterpart. Neither camp is being sloppy. NNScharts stores the direction explicitly and never infers it from the glyph, so a chart cannot mean the opposite of what its author intended.

Color

Sevenths and extensions ride as superscripts. A plain number is a triad; anything after it is color on the same function.

1maj7 – 6m7 – 2m7 – 57.

A chord over a bass note that is not its root is written as a slash chord, with the bass degree underneath.

The second bar is a 1 chord with the 3 in the bass.

Chromatic chords — ones from outside the key — take a sharp or flat before the number. The passing diminished below is a staple of country and gospel writing.

4 – ♯4°7 – 5 – 1. The ♯4°7 walks the bass up from the 4 to the 5.

Shape of the song

Sections are labelled down the left. The abbreviations are conventional rather than fixed — a band that writes Pc for pre-chorus and one that writes B for bridge are both writing correct charts.

A verse and a chorus. Labels sit outside the music, in the left gutter.

Repeat signs save writing the same eight bars twice, with a count for how many times through.

Play these four bars twice.

Minor-key songs

Picking a key for a chart is not picking major or minor. It is setting the key center — the note the numbers revolve around, the one that gets called 1. The scale those numbers count up is always the major scale of that note, so a 3 is always the major third and a minor third is always ♭3. That is the whole reason a chart can move to any key without a single number changing.

A song in A minor can therefore be charted two ways, and both are legal. Center it on C, the relative major, and the tonic chord becomes the 6m. Center it on A, and the song lives in a minor number landscape: 1m ♭3 4m ♭6 ♭7, with the flats written in.

A minor-key progression centered on the relative major: 6m – 4 – 1 – 5.

NNScharts defaults to the relative major, because it is what most Nashville charts do and because it keeps one song’s charts comparable to each other. But the key control only ever asks where 1 lives. If the tune really is minor and you want it to read that way, center it on the minor tonic and write the 1m.

The marks, in one place

1–7Scale degreeThe chord built on that note of the major scale.

♯ ♭ChromaticA chord from outside the key, raised or lowered.

mMinorAlso written as a dash: 6m and 6- are the same chord.

°DiminishedA diminished triad. °7 for the diminished seventh.

+AugmentedAn augmented triad.

susSuspendedsus2 or sus4 where the chart is specific.

7SeventhDominant unless the chart says maj7.

/Slash chordA bass note that is not the chord's root.

◇DiamondHit it and let it ring.

^MarcatoHit it and stop it. Sometimes drawn as an inverted triangle.

<PushThe chord arrives early, ahead of its beat.

|Split barMore than one chord in the bar.

/ /Beat marksHow many beats each chord of a split bar gets.

𝄆 𝄇RepeatPlay the enclosed bars again, with a count.

N.C.No chordNothing sounds — a break, or voices alone.

Reading one for real

Every chart in the library transposes. Open one, pick the key your singer wants, and the numbers stay exactly where they are — because they never described letters in the first place.

Browse the library Chart a song yourself

Every example on this page is a real chart, drawn by the same renderer that draws the library. If the notation here looks like the notation there, that is not a coincidence — it is the same code.