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Music Scoring and Charts: The Jazz Number SystemBy: Stephen FosterStephen is the owner of On Course Publishing, Howler Recording, and maintains two domains besides IDN: yardageguides.com, for golf books, and golphoto.com, for golf photographs. |
| Called by many names, the number system for charting songs has been around for over 50 years in the US. Here is a basic rundown on how it works. Let's start with the major scale...the old Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do. Number that scale 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, so that Do is 1, Fa is 2, etc, 'till Do is 8. Notice that 1 & 8 are the same note, one octave apart. Now look at a standard 3 chord rock, country or blues song in the key of A: the chords of the song are A, D, & E. A is the key, so A is 1. Sing the scale, and D is 4; E is 5. As you expand the complexity of a song, you can number the other chords you might use. In the key of A, B is 2, C is 3-flat, C# is 3. This is important to remember: The major scale does not relate to the white keys of a piano, or any other instrument. It relates to the step relationship of the scale. That relationship is as follows: Starting at the tonic (key) the scale ascends in this progression: step, step, 1/2 step, step, step, step, 1/2 step. The major scale in the key of A is: A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G#, A. The major scale in the key of C is: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. The scale in the key of G is: G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G. Got that? If not, go back & reread this info. The entire system is based on the major scale and its' step relationship, so you've GOT to get this part. OK...now let's chart a simple song. This is a basic "1-4-5" song in the key of A MAJOR. The song is "Keep Your Hands To Yourself". Each bar is a number seperated by a slash, so each slash represents one bar in whatever time signature you're in, in this case 4/4 time. Here's the CHORD chart, followed by the NUMBER chart. Intro: A/A/A/A/ Verse: A/A/A/A/D/D/A/A/E/E/A/A/ repeat for Chorus & verses 'till you barf. Intro: 1/1/1/1/ Verse: 1/1/1/1/4/4/1/1/5/5/1/1/ repeat for Chorus & verses 'till you barf. That's the number chart! You can play it in ANY key, and the chart stays the same. You can run the numbers for any standard song in a major key in a flash with this system. OK...let's do a song in a RELATIVE MINOR key. Follow me here, now. The relative minor of any key is the 6 note. Relative minor of C major is A minor. Relative minor of G major is E minor. Run your number scale, do-re-mi-etc, and you'll see how this works. OK...here's "The Thrill Is Gone" in G Minor. Verse: Gm/Gm/Gm/Gm/Cm/Cm/Gm/Gm/D#/D-sus\Dm/Gm/Gm/. Repeat 'till you turn purple. The backslash is a half-bar. There are any number of ways that split bars are written, but this is a good one. OK...here's the number chart. Verse: 6m/6m/6m/6m/2m/2m/6m/6m/4/3-sus\3m/6m/6m/. Repeat 'till you turn purple. In minor keys, the 1 is the actual KEY OF THE SONG. So a song in Em is actually in G. A song in Am is actually in the key of C. In minor key arrangements, the 2 & 3 chords are in the same place as a major key's 4 & 5 chords. A song in a minor key that you might think of as a 1-4-5 song is actually a 6m-2-3 song. Don't worry too much about this key ID thing....I still call "The Thrill Is Gone" as "key of Gm". This is a working musician's key. Try this with a few songs...you'll get the hang of it. You can use codas & all that stuff, but the NUMBERS are the operational chord systems. Minor is "m", minor 7th is "m7", major 7th is "M7", and so on. Some people write with flatted or sharped in-between chords depending on the key, but it really doesn't matter, because this system is designed to ELIMINATE thoughts of "KEY" and bring the arrangement down to a pure musically relational base. I'll be putting more info on the number system up, including how to construct 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, & 15ths, Sub-9ths, etc. but that is for advanced structuring & writing. You'll find that once you get this down, you'll be able to write songs without any notation system besides this. And once you've written the chart, you can change keys at the drop of a hat, and keep the same chart. I often write songs without any instrument. I just write the chords as numbers in a box, the melody as regular numbers, with a line underneath the number to indicate a lower octave, or a line above the number to indicate a higher octave, and bass lines as numbers in a circle. I use check marks to indicate the beats of the measures. I've written whole songs driving to gigs, and they're completely understandable when I finally pick up an instrument to play them. |