Roman / Nashville Chord Numbering
This is a rare sort of facility for most people. For those that understand this numbering system then this system can be very useful to allow the music and chord notation to be used for any key that the group wants to use for the song.
If you don’t understand the system then see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral_analysis
I have added a link in the Layout menu item that will open up the existing song in a different tab in the browser in Roman notation. the system uses the chord position within the nominated key to signify which chord should be played.
So for example a simple I, IV, V chord progression (used in lots of blues songs) would end up being A, D, E in the key of A or C, F, G in the key of C etc. See chart below:
Chords in key of C: “C”, “Dm”, “Em”, “F”, “G”, “Am”, “Bdim”
Chords in key of A: “A”, “Bm”, “C#m”, “D”, “E”, “F#m”, “G#dim”
Minor chords are designated by lower case and then we add on things like 7 for a seventh – e.g. I7 in C is C7, IV7 in A is D7
Take a look – it’s a great way to learn the chord series in each key. It is a bit of a work in progress because some of my base song coding don’t work well this way (so if you see empty square brackets in a song [] then please let me know so I can update the song a bit)
The Roman song can be edited just like the other songs and you can create PDFs from the page and change layouts including putting chord names above the line.
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I am not at all understanding how to access the nashville number system layouts. Is there a link to follow? Or something to click in the song?
I love your books btw and will be donating asap
1. Go to the song – e.g. https://ozbcoz.com/Songs/song.php?ID=4865
2. Click on the Layout menu item up the top
3. Click on the Show Roman/Nashville Chords item that drops down after doing 2.
4. The Nashville number version opens in a new tab
The Show Roman/Nashville Chords item is not working today (5/30/19), Iām on an iPad Air 2 using Safari. The transpose button does work so I can get different versions.
Hi – my iPad is a bit older than that and works fine using Safari on the iPad. I will test on my wife’s iPad when she returns home (her iPad is more modern). Have you also tried using Chrome as a browser?
Just checked on wife’s iPad Air 2 – she had popups blocked and it didn’t work – I un-blocked and it worked (after asking if a popup should be allowed). Please try that
Hey Jim,
Just wanted to say again how much I like the Nashville book and how helpful its been in bringing me up a step in both my playing, but even more so of my understanding of chord progression;
One exercise I’ve been recently doing is taking some simple songs with verse/chorus verse/chorus formats (Like Hank Williams, John Prine etc) and practice playing them doing modulations after every verse/chorus (both in chords and vocals). So I usually go C to D to G, or G to C to D depending on my vocal range. Its also fun to do songs with a Male and Female part (like Prine’s “In Spite of Ourselves”) using a lower range key for the Male part and a Higher key for the Female ( I use D for Male a nd G for Female)
Anyway, after just a month or two of playing around with these, I’ve found that I can now easily think in terms of the roman numerals and go from key to key easily. Note, I’ve only got these three keys down, but by capo-ing up a couple frets, I can hit almost any key with one of these.
Thanks again for doing this!
Excellent – when I get some time I have promised myself that I will do something similar!
Hey Jim,
I’ve been enjoying using the Roman Nashville sheets to help me learn progressions and really internalize chord progressions. I’m thinking about buying ChordPro and creating my own editable songbook. The trial version I just downloaded only seems to convert to the Arabic numeral Nashville system (i.e. 1, 57, 2m etc.). Is there a different version or an add-on you used to use the roman numeral format (I, V7, ii etc.)?
Hope you are safe and well. We’re still in stay home mode here in New Orleans and will be for quite a while I think. The silver lining though is that iIt has given me lots of time, with no excuses, to really step my playing.
Regards
Gerry
I wrote the code myself to do the conversion – I don’t have the Chordpro program so can’t really comment on it. It converts the songs dynamically through the website
Jim
Thanks for a wonderful collection of songs.
Here in the States the Nashville system typically uses Arabic numbers, 1,4,5 etc because its faster to read and write and also it takes up less room on the paper.
How do I select Arabic number?
You can’t at the moment. I will look at how much work would be involved to do that
Jim