C as a Nashville Chart Sees It

Count off in C and the seven numbers name C, D, E, F, G, A, B — in that order, every time, on a page that never mentions C 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 fiddler reads a number as a set of notes to be inside rather than a chord to land on — the one reader on the floor who plays a line across the chart instead of a grip underneath it. One note at a time means the number is never played whole — it is outlined, and which of its tones gets outlined first is a decision made in the bar, not on the page.