If you haven't read my posts on pop chord notation or roman numeral notation, I suggest you read those first before this one as I'm going to skip over the basics and just explain how to read and understand this system. It'll be a short post, but straight to the point.
The Nashville Number System focuses on scale degrees like roman numerals do. So in the key of C we would know that O Holy Night begins on a C since it starts on 1. Just like pop chords we know 4 is also a major chord because there is nothing after it while the 3 chord in the 4th line is minor as it has an "m." Sometimes you'll see a minus instead in this method.
Above the word "soul" in the 4th line you see 7M7 which is the 7 chord with a major 7 on it, similar to the other styles. If you were to use an Ab chord in the key of C you would write b6 instead of 6- or 6m. For diminished chords you write the small circle in superscripts after the number and augmented chords get a +. The system gets more complicated for music without lyrics below the chords with underlines and tally marks to indicate measures and beats as well as accents, but for most singers these will be irrelevant. If you've read the pop chord notation post you'll notice that all of the other modifications are strikingly similar. This essentially places the Nashville Number System as a middle ground between Roman Numerals and Pop Chords as it indicates function and chords. It makes it easier to play in any key on the fly, but other than that I would not use this system as a singer. I would use Pop chords for playing and Roman Numerals for analyzing music. That is my personal preference though. If you want to learn more about this or other notation methods or to learn about singing, sign up for a singing lesson with me by clicking here!
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