Acoustic Lesson 11 - Suspended Chords

Acoustic Lesson 11- Suspended Chords

If you have been browsing through some of your favorite songs chord charts on the internet or perhaps playing some of your favorite songs at church, you will undoubtedly have some across a puzzling mystery. A mystery that looks like this; A2. What does it mean? When I first started playing guitar I had no clue. I usually just played an A chord and it sounded fine. Rather than learn what it meant I would just play the root chord and move on. Eventually I cam to learn what it meant and today you will too. There actually two different types of chords I want to discuss today, Seconds and Fourths.

A Second Chord is a really commonly used chord. It can be found in all genres of music. A second is simply a major chord with a second added to it. This would be the second note of the major scale. An example of this would a D2 . We will add an E to the D chord (D, F#, A) by letting our high E string ring open. The second is always a whole step down from the third. It is also very common to remove the third of the chord when adding the 2nd.

A D2 looks like this.

Another chord that was a mystery to me was the Fourth Chord. It often appeared like this, Dsus4. A fourth chord if you already haven’t figured it out simply is a major with an added fourth. For an example let’s try a Asus4. We would take a regular A major chord (A, C#, E) and add the fourth from the major scale (D). It is always a half step up from the third. To play and Asus4 we will raise our third (C#) to a D. We can do this on the B string where are third way. It will look like this.

You can hear the color added to the chords by using a second or a fourth. Just remember you don’t want to always use them in every situation Now try and add them into a progression. Try this one in 4/4 time.

G C2 Dsus4 C2

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