Matthews’ creation has since become a staple in Nashville’s music culture and has spread to other regions and genres as well.
This system allows a musician to quickly play in many different keys, and is highly adaptable for use in any musical style. The NNS is based on a simple set of principles that use Arabic numbers to represent chords. He began using the NNS as a shorthand for communicating chord progressions and changes with other musicians, and the system quickly caught on among Nashville’s session musicians. Matthews found that the traditional sheet music notation was cumbersome and time-consuming in the fast-paced recording studio environment. It was developed by Neil Matthews, who was a bass player and studio musician at the time.
The Nashville Number System (NNS) is a popular music notation that originated in the 1950s in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville Number System: A Complete Guide
