Lap Steel: What the Numbers Turn Into

The chord reference for this reader. Pick a root, then any of 62 qualities, and get the shapes plus the thing a chord chart never prints: which digit stands for this chord once somebody counts off in a key.

A lap steel player reads a number as a fret to slide to, with an open tuning underneath that already spells one chord — so the chart is read as a series of distances from wherever the bar happens to be. There is nothing to finger and no grip to form — the diagram is one straight bar across a fret, so the digit resolves to a single place to be, and everything expressive happens on the way there.

Every shape below is drawn for CEGACE, 6 strings, open shapes first and movable ones after them, and each one plays back — because the fastest way to check that a number was read right is to hear it.