Pushes

A push moves a chord earlier than the beat it is written on, usually by an eighth note, so that it lands on the “and” before its downbeat instead of on the downbeat itself. The bar does not change length and the numbers do not move. What changes is that the whole band hits the new chord together, half a beat before somebody reading the plain numbers would expect it.

The mark is a small chevron above the number. It goes on the chord that arrives early, and the chord before it simply gives up its last eighth. That is the whole instruction: nothing about volume, nothing about how long the chord rings, only when it starts. Half the band pushing while half does not is what under-rehearsed sounds like.

Because the mark sits on the number rather than on the bar line, it works anywhere a chord can go. In a split bar it means the second chord arrives before its own beat, not before the bar.

It also stacks with the other marks a chord can carry. A push on a diamond, where the chord comes in early and then rings, is a common way to end a song.

This is where the wild disagrees. Open ten charts and you will find the push drawn as < on some and > on others. On nearly all of them it means the same thing: early.

Two readings explain that, and both are coherent.

• The arrow reading: the mark points in the direction of the push. < pulls the chord earlier; > would push it later.
• The accent reading: >is standard notation’s accent mark, borrowed to mean “lean on this one”. It carries no direction at all. That is why Chas Williams, the most widely cited author on the system, uses > for the early push and names no late counterpart.

Neither camp is being sloppy. They are reading one mark through two different traditions.

The trouble is that a chart cannot tell you which tradition its author was in. The same > means different things in the two, and nothing on the page says which one you are holding.

So does the late push exist? In print, no. The teaching books and the academic literature describe anticipation only, and Williams’ own list of symbols has no entry for it. In the commercial vernacular a push simply isan early chord, so “late push” is close to a contradiction in terms.

In software, yes. Two shipping chart apps have a mark for a chord that arrives after its beat. How often anybody plays one, nobody has measured. Treat it as real and rare: something a chart may say, not something a chart usually means.

In NNScharts, adding a push writes an early one, because that is the only push the literature attests. For a chart brought in from another app the rule is to keep what the source says rather than silently correct it, and to treat a bare mark as an early push that was assumed rather than confirmed, and to flag it for checking. If an arrangement genuinely wants a chord laid back, a word on the chart says so more safely than a chevron ever will.

The same goes for distance. A push is an eighth unless the chart says otherwise; sixteenth-note pushes exist in software and in no book, so if you mean one, say so in words on the chart.

The last confusion is a naming one. In some circles the push is called an “arrow”, because a chevron looks like one. But the number system has a real arrow, and it does a different job.

A walkup or walkdown arrow, written 4 5 or 1 6m, says the bass walks stepwise out of one chord and into the next. It goes after the chord being left, not over the chord being arrived at, and it is about which notes get played. A push is about when, and nothing else.

If a chart calls something an arrow and you are not sure which it means, look at where it sits. A chevron over a number is a push. A diagonal line after a number is a walk.