F on Mandolin: the Numbers It Answers To

Everything rooted on F, 54 qualities in 10 families. A chart will ask for three or four of them by number and leave the rest to the record, but the root is the part the number pins down, so this is the page a reader lands on first.

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.

A mandolin player reads a number and the two and the four — the chop lands on the backbeat whatever the digit is, so the chart tells this player where to put a chord, never when. The digit decides which four courses get stopped; the count-off already decided when, and no mark on the page argues with it.