INSTRUCTION : Deconstructing Sus Chords Lesson

by acousticguitar.com

Learn the easy music theory behind chord suspension and resolution. With tab. By Matt Warnock

Suspended chords, or “sus chords” as they are better known, are somewhat of an enigma in the realm of modern harmony. They float between the worlds of major and minor chords, somehow sounding like they can function in any harmonic situation, regardless of key or tonality. They are at once full and heavy sounding (mostly a result of the perfect-fifth interval they contain), while at the same time open-ended and harmonically ambiguous, due to the lack of a major or minor third.

In this article, we’ll take a look at how sus chords are constructed and show how you can begin playing sus2 and sus4 chord voicings beyond open position.
Open-Position Sus Chords

In classical harmony, the word suspended originally referred to situations where a note from one chord was sustained while the rest of the voices changed to a new chord, as shown in Example 1. These days, musicians use the term a bit more loosely, referring to chords in which the third (major or minor) is replaced by the second or fourth note of the scale and often (though not always) resolves back to
the major or minor third.

Example 2 shows a couple of simple Dsus chord voicings in open-position. Notice that the F# (the third of the D-major scale) is replaced by the open E string (the second) in the sus2 chord and the third-fret G note (the fourth) in the sus4 chord. The resolution back to the third is common, as heard in the standard D-major chords in this example, although sus chords can stand on their own and don’t always require a resolution.

Many common open-position sus chords can be built in this manner—simply replace the third of the chord with either the second for a sus2 (Example 3a) or the fourth for a sus4 (Example 3b). Take a minute to play each of the chords in Example 3, and alternate between each sus2 and sus4 voicing and its major-chord cousin to get these sounds flowing through your ears and under your fingers.   Example 4 shows a common I–IV–V–I chord progression in the key of D that features sus2 and sus4 chords resolving to major chords on the third beat of each measure. This example is written as an arpeggiated line, but the progression could just as easily be strummed—the important thing to notice is the open sound that each sus chord makes before it resolves to the more stable sound of the major triad.