Sus Chords

What’s up guys! Bryan here - today I want to talk about suspended or ‘sus’ chords.

A sus chord is when we take a major chord [1  3  5] but suspend the 3rd and either raise to a 4th or lower to a 2nd: 

[1  4  5] or [1  2  5] respectively. 

Let’s look at some examples:

Dmaj (open position)

As always, we should be sure to know what notes we are playing - in this case our chord consists of [D  A  D  F#] or in intervals [1  5  1  3].

Now we have located where our 3rd is, we need to change it to a 4th. 

Raise the F# a half step up to G - this can easily be done by placing your pinky finger on the third fret of the first string. 

Simple as that, you have made:

Dsus4!

This chord definitely has a sense of tension, and feels as though it wants to move somewhere else. An easy way to do this is to just lift your pinky finger and fall back to the Dmaj chord for a satisfying resolution.

How about the Dsus2?

All we need to do is include the open first string, which is an E.

Switching between these three chords takes minimal effort and is a great way to get used to how Sus chords sound and also visualise how they are built.

Let’s work with another chord we’re all comfortable with: 

A Maj (open position) -  [A  E  A  C#  E]  or in intervals [1  5  1  3  5]

So, very similarly to our Dmaj example we can simply move the 3rd (C#) up or down to create our Sus shapes (up a half step to D for sus4 down a whole step to B for sus2)

So that’s just a short explanation on how I would approach finding and learning suspended chords.

Take time to explore for yourself. Once you get comfortable, try to move beyond the open positions and find sus chords all over the neck. It can be much more rewarding to discover new chords on your own, instead of just looking at the shapes without understanding how those shapes are formed.

I hope you found this helpful, don’t forget to check back regularly for more guitar-based theory lessons.

Thanks!