E 6sus2 on Lap Steel, and the Number That Writes It

E 6sus2 spells E – F# – B – C#. That much is fixed. What is not fixed is what it is CALLED: hand the same chord to a chart in A and it is written 5; hand it to a chart in B and the identical chord is written 4, on a page nobody had to rewrite.

E answers to the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and the 7 depending on what got called: it is a plain number in 7 of the twelve keys and needs an accidental in the other 5.

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.