The sus chord
As a youth I learned to play piano through the standard classical training. Reading notes and playing pieces note for note. As I continue to learn and think about music in a different way, I am often amazed at how simple it sometimes seems compared to how I try to understand music from a note by note perspective. I equate this with an article in Discover magazine some time ago that (in brief) demonstrated the becoming a master at a topic was analogous to changing the way we think about subjects from “m - a - r - y - h - a - d - a - l - i - t - t……….” (one letter at a time) to “Mary had a little lamb…..” and you even know what comes next. Hundreds of letters, but only a few score words, and only one poem.
So applying this new way of thinking, I called my buddy Kevin up and said “tell me about sus chords”. I’d been finding them in some of the songs I was learning, but did not understand their purpose.
First, a sus chord is chord a chord with the 3rd replaced by the 4th. In keyboard terms, a Csus is C - F - G. (There are other sus chords, like sus2 that are different, but I assume “sus” to be sus4).
I noted a great way to visualize this on a guitar. If you play “cowboy” chords, common on acoustic guitar (the open chords like A, Am, D, Dm, E, Em) then the sus are very easy to find. Play an Am, then play an A, then move the same finger that changed one more fret in the same direction. The Dsus to Dm is a particularly easy change, and you might recognize that this is in many tunes. One could also think of this as the minor chord having a flat 3rd, the major chord having a 3rd, and the sus chord having a sharp 3rd (4th). Thus, any chord where you know the major and minor forms easily point the way to a sus form.
Use - the sus chord is a variation that typically leads back to the major chord. It is rarely used as a transition chord. So when you see a sus chord, expect it to create a little tension or variation then return to the major chord. It is most often used with the I chord in a chord progression.
Musical Styles - the sus chord is often used in folk and folk rock music. This makes sense when you think about songs that stay on the I chord for a long time. Especially if you are playing solo acoustic, this could get a bit boring. So variations in strum pattern combined with a change to a sus chord and back can create something of a groove. Picked up by the rock musicians, it is then often incorporated into a rock riff. I’ve seen few blues or country tunes that use sus chords.
This gave me some great insight into a question I’d always wondered. What gives a genre its feel? Rhythm I feel, and tempo. But the sus chord gave me some insight into other subtle influences of one genre to another. This is just my opinion, but is seems like the old blues was typically major and dom7 chords. The folkies added a sus chord. The British took blues tunes they liked, emphasized guitar riffs sometimes using sus chords they learned from the folkies, amped up and recorded stuff like “Spoonful”, “Whole Lotta Love”, “I Can’t Quit You Babe”, and “Killing Floor” among many many others.
- the Muse
