Jazz was the thing from early 1900's until about 1950's when crooners (the most popish branch of jazz) started to fade away and then rock'n'roll took over.
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Nashville Number System: Is that all it is?
- Thread starter BassAndReeds
- Start date
Jazz was the thing from early 1900's until about 1950's when crooners (the most popish branch of jazz) started to fade away and then rock'n'roll took over.
Agreed. And to add to that point. Early in the 1900s Sousa and marches were a big thing. And a lot of the Crooner music came from Musical Theater. I think the biggest subset of Jazz is Ragtime in and around the 20s.
(I haven't studied jazz history a lot, but I do come with a music degree, so take me with a grain of salt)
Big bands were something too around WWII, lot of people danced to that music.
I had the feeling Ragtime was popular because of silent movies
Yes, I agree. Before that is was military music. John Phillip Sousa was the rock star of the late 19th century.
I've done that. You have to water down the music and play for people who only care about the tempos. They can't easily distinguish between styles, although they all think they're experts. The ballroom dancers are the most demanding and unappreciative crowd you'll ever work for. Here are some actual quotes from dance instructors:
"Lady In Red is a rhumba". No. It's a Nightclub Two Step.
"The Beatles actually wrote I Just Want To Dance With You, and it's a rhumba." No. It's a Cowboy Cha Cha.
"You need to play that at 144 measures, not 143 measures." Huh??
Edited to add: "Musicians need to be told what to do." For unindoctrinated ballroom musicians that's partly true, but you don't have to be a drill sergeant when instructing them.
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Book arrived yesterday. It's awesome. I'm getting songs I'm not familiar with correct the first time (on rhythm guitar) with ease.
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If you ever learned how to read jazz charts, it's a breeze. If you were in school concert band, all the better. If neither, it would still be pretty intuitive.
It is, and the book has an intro tutorial which explains all of those. The 4 with the two dots over it, for instance, is a 2/4 off measure.
Late to the thread. I've heard of Nashville Numbers, but never learned the system or used them. I just went and browsed through the opening pages of the Hal Leonard book on Amazon that's been linked. And it looks to me like it is more than just writing 2-5-1 instead of ii-V-i. It has ways to indicate song form, chord inversions, and "odd bars" (varying time signatures from the main one for the song) in a pretty concise fashion, something you can get on a single page rather than needing to spread it over three pages of sheet music in standard notation. I can see it having practical value in certain settings.
Got the book last night. Taking a look see this afternoon. Kinda fun. Starts out strong with "Achy Breaky Heart". Can definitely get through tunes really quickly with this system, even for someone that has hardly listened to country music.
I was using this earlier today to teach music theory stuff to a fellow musician. It's great!
From the book, "Pop Music Theory".
First I heard of it being called Nashville Numbers was probably 5 years after I started playing, at a jam session. I had always just thought of most pop/country/rock songs in terms of major/minor scale intervals. Then the few oddball intervals like the devil's interval or the interval that ends most blues songs. Which I understood was the basics of hearing in relative pitch. Nothing revolutionary or fancy IMO.
That reminds me that I had to learn Good Ol' Boys by Waylon for a country project a few years ago. There's a part - I think it's in the first verse - where basically an extra beat is somehow shoehorned in at the end. It's just this random bar of like...1/4 that was needed to finish the lyrical phrase before going back to the tonic. Doesn't do that anywhere else later in the song. That was really bizarre and you couldn't be sleeping at the wheel and just let yourself feel the next chord change at that point of the tune.
Early (AKA "real"
) country often uses the Appalachian "hitch" AKA extra or skipped beat. Nothin' worse than hearing a hack cover band play "Ring of Fire" in straight 4/4 
.OTOH it took 3 months to even get one of my bands to play "Folsom Prison" as an 11 bar blues all the way though
- no hitches in that one.
