The next time somebody calls that song at a jam, you’ll know how to play it even if they choose a different key.Ĭongratulations, you’re becoming a musician. You may not know what key it’s being played in, but you’ll know how those chord changes sound. You’ll hear a bluegrass song on your iPhone and be able to identify when the song jumps from the I to the IV, or from the I to the V. You will come to recognize the sound of these chord changes. So, the chord progression for “Blue Ridge Cabin Home” would be:Īs you play more and jam with others more, you will find that most bluegrass songs use just a few of these go-to chords (the I, IV and V are by far the most common). The V chord is just one letter up from the IV chord. In the key of D, the IV chord is G because D > E > F > G.
(In music theory they probably say it’s three scale degrees up from the tonic or something like that, but hey, this is bluegrass.) In the key of G, the IV chord is C because G > A > B > C. The IV chord is three letters up from that. What do chord numbers mean?Įvery key has a I chord, known as the “root.” It is the chord that corresponds to the key. The first change is to the IV chord, then to the V chord, then back to the I chord. What they’re telling you is that the song starts on the I chord. That’s all you need to know, whether they sing it in the key of G or the key of D. They’ll tell you, “The chord progression is just I, IV, V, I repeated.” (Those are Roman numerals, by the way.) Suppose you’re jamming with somebody who wants to play “Blue Ridge Cabin Home” but you don’t know the song. This is particularly handy in bluegrass jams, where the person who calls the song, or the person who sings it, typically gets to pick the key. If you know a song’s chord progression using the Nashville Number System, you can play it in any key. The Nashville Number System is a simple way to indicate a song’s chord changes by using numbers instead of the typical letters, so you aren’t tying them to any specific key. How does the Nashville Number System work? Musicians communicate in all kinds of ways, but one of the most important ways bluegrass musicians communicate is through the Nashville Number System. How to memorize the Nashville Number System