Sheet music in Roman numerals

relic245

Many years ago when I was having some lessons my teacher used to give me music to standards in this kind of notation:

IM7 ii -7 V7 etc

The idea was that if you know your shapes and where the root notes are you can play it in any key.

Do any standards books exist written in this format?

Chalky

I've only seen one and that was a French language version.

thecolourbox

Not really of any use to you but to me that's the "proper" way of writing chords, but that's because I did classical music theory I think

viz

That's just normal chord notation. Not so much in TAB maybe because that's key-specific, but in general writing about music. Check wikipedia entry for ii V I for example. It's an extremely helpful way of thinking about chords - in fact it's the basis of harmony.

Phil_aka_Pip

Except for the use of capital M (which is an abomination)

relic245

I agree it's a really great way of writing chord progressions. So I wonder why no one has ever done the equivalent of the real book with chords written this way

Dominic

All Nashville works on a numbers system - granted that is usually 1,4,5 in some configuration or another ............yeeha

They use Roman

maxd

I'd recommend you install iReal Pro, it works on a Mac, on an iPad or any Android device, just not Windoze.  You can download about 3,000 songs from their site for free, and you can easily key in your own chords.  You can choose a song style (anything from bluegrass, through mulitple jazz styles, to reggae).  You can easily transpose to another key, change tempo add repeats, coda, signos etc  Then, to finally get to the point, you can switch the display from chord symbols to numbers.  Oh, and you can display chord grips for guitar or piano.  A google search should find you their site and reviews.  It costs about £9 or so.

robinbowes

You should check out the Real books:

http://www.halleonard.com/search/search.action?_c&seriesfeature=REALBK&;

R.

Sporky

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Except for the use of capital M (which is an abomination)

It might have meant 1000?

Quite a finger stretch for that.

maxd

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Except for the use of capital M (which is an abomination)

Which alternative do you prefer out of interest: Imaj7, I^7, in order to distinguish it from the b7: I7?

Evo

maxd said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Except for the use of capital M (which is an abomination)

Which alternative do you prefer out of interest: Imaj7, I^7, in order to distinguish it from the b7: I7?

If they write iim7 then Imaj7, if they write ii-7 then throw the I^7 in there. That's always how I've done it