F# maj7b5 on Lap Steel, and the Number That Writes It

F# maj7b5 spells F# – A# – C – E#, and a Nashville chart can call it in any key. On the lap steel in CEGACE there is no straight bar and no short slant that sounds it: at every fret the strings that land on its tones leave one out, or too few of them ring.

So a lap steel player answers this number with a partial — the part of the chord the bar can reach — or leaves it to the rest of the band; this page draws nothing rather than a grip a steel cannot hold.

F# 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.