Okay, it is time to learn some more. I got four easy chords for you so do not panic. They are known as SUS chords. I am talking about SUS4, which you might have heard of and SUS2 which maybe you have heard of maybe you have not. The SUS in case you did not know is the abbreviation of suspended. What do you suspend? It is a bit of a misnomer. If I play a suspended 4th, you think, ah so you suspend the 4th. No, it does not work like that. You suspend the third and put the chord in its place. That is the way it works.
So let us take a D chord with your note and suspend the third. As I was just explaining, where is the third, DO, RE, MI, the F#, we take it away. We suspend that. You hang it. You know 4th suspending, it is it not and temporarily replace it with the 4th so we do not say temporarily replaced we say suspended. SUS4 simply D, add your little finger on the 3rd temporarily down. Notice I am saying it as temporary because you will typically go back to D major of Dsus4. I trust you have noticed by now, I am putting my little finger on the D chord there as a basis. I will put my little finger on the high G at the 3rd fret of the top string. D major Dsus chord, can you hear that it is really not at rest? It wants to go back. You can go back to minor by the way. You can do D minor and Dsus4 but more of a melancholic note, Dsus4, D minor, so the Dsus4 D major, Dsus4D or Dsus4D minor.
Why am I showing you pairs of chord? Well the point is we are trying to make, SUS chords typically take you somewhere and bring you back. Okay, so a little detour. SUS chord is just as easy if not easy to learn. Start with your D for example, take your second finger off and that is one, two guess what it is SUS chord. How was that? D major and SUS and in case you have already discovered for yourself, they all go together. D Dsus4 in any order, you might wish to pause the DVD and just have it a little move around.
Okay, you just learned Dsus4 and SUS2. Let us apply the same mechanics as to A. I am supposed to start with A major for example. The way that I recommended it to be assertive, I remind you of what I showed you back in chapter one, fingers two, three, and four. The reason I chose that fingering – I will reveal to you now. I will say you can just shift your little finger over Asus4 one, two, three, four. There is the note of D, ABC#D, so that it is Asus4 simply shifting your little long. You can include the high open E if you wish that is optional so A major, Asus4. Guess what, as it happens like in the D chord, you take your finger off. It is not always that way but in this case, you take this finger off to create Asus2. Asus2 is simply fingers two and three as they were in the chord. The little finger has been taken away. A major,Asus4, Asus2 or indeed A minor surrounded by Asus4, Asus2, A minor.
That works nice in electric but perhaps you can imagine on an acoustic guitar. I am just picking the notes so I am basically showing you chords you already know. Let us recap that. A major sus4, little finger long, little finger off play the top two-string note, Asus4 and of course, you can mix them up with the D versions the Dsus2, Dsus2. You can do all that. Remember, there are ideas when it comes to it but there are no rules when it comes to this.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services