E as a Nashville Chart Sees It

Count off in E and the seven numbers name E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D# — in that order, every time, on a page that never mentions E anywhere.

Three of those need a mark and four do not. A bare number is a MAJOR chord, so 2-, 3-, 6-, 7- are what a chart writes when it wants the chord the key would have supplied anyway; a bare 2 means the writer wanted something else and meant it.

A pedal steel player reads a number as a destination rather than a position — the pedals get there from wherever the last one ended, so a steel player marks a chart for the move between two numbers more than for either one. With the bar across 10 strings tuned to C6, the next number is often reached without moving the bar at all: a foot or a knee retunes the strings already ringing, which is why this reader's key pages draw every change of a chart as that move.

Under each chart below, every change is drawn as a pedal move on the C6 neck: where the bar sits, which pedals and levers go down or come up, both charts, and a Hear button that bends the ringing strings into the next chord.