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FINALLY!

Jimmy Bones

Jimmy Bones

Feb 24, 2009
1,970
5
Baxley, GA
www.myspace.com
#1
Last night I was interviewed by a local cover band with a steady house gig and steady pay. It went well, and in a few days, I am gonna have an official audition. The band plays mostly country and southern rock covers.

This concerns me, I have never played covers, never had a steady gig, and these guys are all old timer bigshot former touring/studio guys and only play a billion times better than me.

They haven't given me my audition set yet, and told me I needed to abandon tabs and learn something called the Nashville number system. No idea what that is.

Any of you got any advice or tips for me so I don't bomb this shot?
 
#2
they are right you need to learn the nashville number system it is the best way to right charts simply. it only took a five min exp. for me to get the basics down. you do need to know some theroy though you know the1,4,5, thing it's kind of hard to explain without showing you a chart you can probely find info somewhere on the net
 
#4
Nashville numbers is when you've got the key and the chart's written out as the numbers of scale tones in the roots of the progression.

For example, a 12 bar 1-4-5 in A would be:

A A A A D D A A E D A (E) with the final E being more of an optional accent thing.

It would be written out in Nashville numbers as

1 - 1 - 4 - 1 - 5 4 1 (5)

Written out like that they can say take it in E and you'd be able to just transpose it on the fly. It helps to be familiar with the way the tones of the scale are located relative to each other. Good luck.
 
#6
Maybe I am wrong and if I am please correct me y'all.

The way I understand the Nashville number system is if you have an 8 note scale. Just replace each step in the scale with a number. Take a G major scale for example.

G=1
A=2
B=3
C=4
D=5
E=6
F#=7
G=8

Just like BryanM said in the above post, if someone says hey, let's do a 1,4,5 in G
then you know pretty much what is going to happen in the chord progression.
 
#7
BryanM said:
Nashville numbers is when you've got the key and the chart's written out as the numbers of scale tones in the roots of the progression.

For example, a 12 bar 1-4-5 in A would be:

A A A A D D A A E D A (E) with the final E being more of an optional accent thing.

It would be written out in Nashville numbers as

1 - 1 - 4 - 1 - 5 4 1 (5)

Written out like that they can say take it in E and you'd be able to just transpose it on the fly. It helps to be familiar with the way the tones of the scale are located relative to each other. Good luck.
Click to expand...


So in E it would be
E E E E A A E E B A E (B) ?

Sorry for off topic
 
#8
ThoDamned said:
So in E it would be
E E E E A A E E B A E (B) ?

Sorry for off topic
Click to expand...

Yes.
The E major scale in Nashville Numbers would be...

E=1
F#=2
G#=3
A=4
B=5
C#=6
D#=7
E=8

so a 1,4,5 or I,IV,V would be just as you said.

E E E E A A E E B A E (B)

1,4,5 or I, IV, V, in roman numerals is the best example IMO
of how the number system works. I, IV, V, is a typical country/blues progression.

I hope I explained this right and I hope it helps!

:bassist:
 
#11
Jimmy Bones said:
I imagine I ought to start studying scales again then.
Click to expand...

Studying scales helps a lot because it can make your playing a lot more colorful and expressive. I've been trying to do this a lot more lately myself. We as bass players really benefit from having scale knowledge because so much of what we do is arpeggios. My latest hurdle has been trying to teach myself to read music after all these years lol.
 
#14
With the audition this close and your band mates being so tenured.

knowing the form of a no open strings scale and the numbers will Really hope.

As it sounds, I'd be focusing on the non-playing attributes (singing, selling, schleping etc).. most auditioners only discuss their instrument to forget music is 10% of the deal.
 
#16
Just got the setlist I am going to have to learn.

Grand total of about 90 or so songs, but at least a couple are some standards I already know, like Brick House, Funky Music, etc.

Others, I have no idea what they are, and am having to scan through tab sites to find out who sings them and what have you.

I am grabbing all the Guitar Pro tabs I can find because I have a tab reader/player on my phone, but I have only found a few of them so far.

I've attached the spreadsheet with their song list that they sent me, so if you guys know where I might find some stuff to help me learn some of these, I'd appreciate it oodles. Been searching through Ultimate Guitar and 911 Tabs and such already.
 

Attachments

#17
Jimmy Bones said:
Just got the setlist I am going to have to learn.

Grand total of about 90 or so songs, but at least a couple are some standards I already know, like Brick House, Funky Music, etc.

Others, I have no idea what they are, and am having to scan through tab sites to find out who sings them and what have you.

I am grabbing all the Guitar Pro tabs I can find because I have a tab reader/player on my phone, but I have only found a few of them so far.

I've attached the spreadsheet with their song list that they sent me, so if you guys know where I might find some stuff to help me learn some of these, I'd appreciate it oodles. Been searching through Ultimate Guitar and 911 Tabs and such already.
Click to expand...
oh god, i hope you're listening to the actual songs and not some kind of robot tone generator thing!

chances are, if these are popular songs, you'll find just about every one of them on youtube, either the actual videos or homemade stuff where people put taylor swift tunes over their wedding photos or whatever.

also, they're not gonna play 90 songs at an audition. i have to think they'd want to do 4 or 5, either of their choosing or yours.
 
#19
Yeah, pick a few you know you can nail.

And skip the tab sites, unless you also play along with youtube/mp3/cd of the song. Some of the tab sites are notorious for being sloppy/wrong transcriptions.

If you have a lot of songs to learn that you haven't heard, I guess no harm using tab for a guideline rather than learning them all by ear from scratch (I'd rather learn by ear from scratch, but I'm really good at picking chord structures out), but definitely doublecheck all of them against a recording before trusting any of them.

Randy
 
#20
Be sure and ask if all the songs are in the original keys. How long do you have to learn the tunes? Do they have NNS charts available? If they want you to learn the NNS, seems to they should have some charts.

Seems like you'll have to step up your game for this gig. I'd make a basic chart for each tune and get a notebook to hold all the charts until you get them down.

Good luck.
 

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