Suspended Chords on Guitar Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar Course From

there is no more surefire way to confuse
a guitar player than by taking a cord
and adding either a number or a word
after it
for example a suspended chord I just
sort of suspended it seems to cause -
cause chaotic guitar player anxiety one
of the easiest ways to see a suspended
chord is this D chord right here and
like there's like a million rock songs
that use D D sus for suspended for these
substitutes suspended for Izumo yeah
you
but beyond Justi that that one's an easy
one because you're really just taking
your fingers and kind of altering accord
which are really fundamentally
understand what you're doing is going to
help you out in your playing is going to
help you to create suspended chords off
of different route notes and just make
you a better musician in general so
we're going to stick with this D chord
right here and see what it's all about
now it's all derived from the major
scale as always so if we're playing in
the key of D you don't you have to
remember these notes what it's helpful
to visually see it playing in the key of
D we have a D an e F sharp B C sharp D
so one two three four five six seven now
a D major chord is comprised of the
first third and fifth notes now all
suspended chord is is is taking that
third in this case D F sharp is taking
an F sharp and it's suspending that
third to keep it the fourth or the
second note in the scale so this D right
here there's the F sharp now what we're
doing here is we're changing this F
sharp to a G so as you can see d e f
repeat one two three four that's the D
suspended four we're taking the fourth
note and replacing the third note
suspending the third to the fourth now
you take your middle finger away what's
really doing is you're taking a SEP
sharp and making it an E so we have the
first the second and the fifth so really
it doesn't give you a major or a minor
sound it just kind of gives you a
suspended sound for better worse now
this is just one position that kind of
makes it accessible another one is a
that's another one you kind of really
get to the open chords now something
that'll make your playing more intricate
is taking them off of different route
notes so for example let's take this G
right here you don't see a lot of G
suspended chords but when you hear them
they're really pretty cool so this shape
right here is a great example a great
visual example of what a suspended chord
is really doing now again if we're going
off the G Major scale
now our notes are g a b c d e f sharp g
okay so energy major chord we're taking
the first third and fifth notes which
are G B and D so if we wanted to make a
suspended four chord we would replace
the third B with the fourth note C so G
a C and India now in a chord like this
it's kind of hard to play that because
the B is here and the C is here so what
you might want to do is add an octave of
a suspended two chord so it's been Jesus
two would be a G and a and a D and again
see these are on the same string so I
can't play them at the same time in this
position what I can do is I can add the
octave a two looks like a power for a
one or five
and I think that's like a really cool
chord right there
now another interesting thing about
suspended chords is they can be
interpreted different ways that's
another word it kind of throws maybe
starting musicians off like I'm really
interpreting this chord as a de sus to
it about that's kind of stupid but it
makes a lot of sense once you kind of
see what's going on now again I said
this G suspended 2 chord okay I G is 1 D
is 5 a is 2
now this can actually be a different
court depending on how you interpret the
root this is true for any suspended 2
chord it can be a suspended 4 chord for
a different note in this case the fifth
so again let's cut that might be kind of
confusing at first but if you just take
the notes G D and a we can rearrange
those notes in different ways if we can
look at G is 1 on 2 a is 2 and D is 5
but what if we were in the D major scale
again where D is 1 2 3 4 now G is 4 and
a is 5 so we have two different
combinations of g-d and a now in guitar
world usually the root the lowest note
you're playing is kind of the one that
takes the most presses so I would really
almost always think of this as a G
suspended to court but it could be a T
suspended 4 chord the bigger lesson here
is that any suspended 2 chord is also
considered a suspended 4 chord of the
fifth note from which displayed another
thing of confusion I kinda want to clear
up is the difference from the suspended
chord and an ad 9 chord you've probably
seen the chord C
at 9:00 something like this
now what we're doing is we're taking a C
major chord if you have a c e g again
from the c major scale see see that's
the one three and five at the c major
scale now what we're doing when you play
a c at nine chord we're adding a deeper
now you might be thinking well D is the
second note of the C major scale see
Dean why isn't this a C suspended - it's
a great question uh what was actually
happening is we're taking it instead of
replacing the knee here which is the
third the major third of a C chord
instead of replacing the e with a D
we're adding a D - a C chord so there's
a distinction between replacing a third
and suspending a third and that's why we
end up with chords like C and nine as
compared to C suspended - in which case
we would take and E get rid of it and
then replace it with a DIA
so anyways suspended chords there you go
never fear them again