Hey, how you doing? Justin here
for a beginner's lesson on sus chords.
Just having a little cuddle with my dog
I just filmed this whole lesson
and forgot to turn the camera on
I hate it when I do that.
I think Ziggy realized I was getting a bit upset
So came over to say hello
Ok, you need to get back to your basket.
I gotta do a guitar lesson.
Come on, off you go, back to bed.
Come on, bedtime.
Sus is short for suspended.
And suspended, it doesn't really mean this
but you can think of it
as meaning: take away the third
and replace with.
Now, that would only make sense
if you've done music theory before.
The general idea with chords
is they're made up —
—a major chord—
is made up of the first, third and fifth degree
of a major scale.
Now, if we talk about, say, D major
which is one of the chords that we're gonna be checking out today,
The notes in a D major scale
are D, E, F#, G, A, B, C# and D.
If we want know the notes in a D chord
it would be the first note, the third note and the fifth note
of the D major scale which was the note
D, F# and A.
Let's start by having a look at our D chord here.
We're not playing the thickest two strings
We've got the open D which is obviously the root.
Here the first finger is on the note A
which is the fifth note of the D major scale.
Third finger here is down on a note D again, the doubling.
An octave there.
And the last note,
thinnest string, is the note F#.
This is the third note of the D major scale.
The third note of the D major scale you
might remember is one we can flatten
by one semitone and it becomes a minor chord.
So we got major
and minor.
This third degree of the scale
is pretty powerful to make it
either major or minor
but if we take it away...
The suspended means take away
the third and replace with.
If we take it away it's not major or minor
It's got a very different kind of character to it
so let's explore Sus 2.
Second note of the D major scale
is the note E, conveniently located
as an open E string.
Here's your D chord.
If we just lift off second finger
We've got D Sus 2
Now we've also got D Sus 4,
take away the third and replace with the fourth.
D, E, F#, G is the fourth note.
G conveniently located here with little finger.
Third fret, thinnest string.
And together, they're both variations
that we can use as replacements for the D chord.
We can use them as kind of ornaments
and just use them sparingly.
Or they can actually become part of a kind of a melodic riff.
So we can have like a...
Or something like...
Or...
The first thing I would recommend you do
is experiment with the major chords just
like I've been doing there with the D. But remember because sus chords are
not major or minor you can also use them with the minor chords.
So if we go here from a D minor
lift off the first finger, there is a Dsus2, D minor, Dsus4, D minor.
Very, very cool little sound this indeed. Let's move over and check out how to
do it on the A chord. So here is a regular A chord...
this note is the third of the chord. You can tell because it's the one that
we use to change between the major and minor.
OK? If we move it down a tone
we get Asus2, beautiful sounding chord.
Now note that I've just changed the fingering here. If you're using it as
an ornement you'd probably stick with fingers one and two in that order. But
if you're just playing it on it's own it really doesn't matter what fingers
you're using to play that chord.
Just if you're doing...
probably you're going to be playing it with those fingers.
Really doesn't make any difference, it's up to you.
There's A. Little finger down here, there's your Asus4.
That was the third, raise it one semi-tone.
I must admit I was kind of anticipating sus chords being pretty easy.
I didn't think anyone would have any problem with them,
but when NITSUJ had a go at it, man, I found out it was a loads harder.
I had all of these delusions of teaching you guys how to do fancy ornements
hammer-ons and flick-offs and stuff. But actually they can be pretty tricky.
So if you're struggling here, if you're like "What the hell is my finger
doing that, it keeps going back on the wrong strings" and that kind of thing.
That's dead normal. It's just going to take a little bit of practice. It does
come quicker than you might anticipate but definitely NITSUJ really found the
early days of this stuff pretty heavy duty. Let's just have a look at some
E chords and then I'm going to give you some exercices.
So here is an E chord. Now, the note that changes from major to minor here
is ther first finger. So lifts it off.
So playing a sus2 would involve like moving the minor note back another
one to here. We can't really get past the nut. There's not a backward fret.
So playing an Esus2 is not possible in the open position, it kind of is but
it's a lot more complicated. We're not going to get into doing that just now.
But adding little finger down...
here on the second fret of the third string.
It»'s a fantastic mood.
Also works with the minor of course.
But just remember there's no easy sus2 grip on the E chord.
As I mentioned a couple of times already sus chords can be used as ornements,
or embellishments where you'd use just one of the sus chords or more,
and you'd just kind of add them on and off to add some interest to a
chord that you play. Particularly when you're stuck on one chord for a lenght
of time. Or they can be used a part of a riff like "Summer of 69" that kind
of thing where, or "Painted Black" where actually it forms part of the
melody within the chords and both are quite valid. Now for your practice I'd
recommend spending a bit of time at the beginning just muking around
with these. So playing a D chord, adding a sus2, adding a sus4,
doing it for the A chord, adding a sus4 for the A chord. Just expériment a
little bit. Get used to what it feels like. It's not quite as easy as I'd
hoped and you might find the same, or you might find that super easy
straight away if you've been playing a little while and this is not your first
go at doing this kind of thing. But just experiment. Have a bit of a
play around, see what you come up with. I'm going to give you 3 exercices as
well that I think are worth practicing. Specifically, just because they make
a nice combination of the sus chords and combining it with a strumming
pattern and the're very usable little elements. Now, the very first one
I'll do it on the D chord first of all.
We strum down, down, down, up, down, up, down. So we've got 1, 2, third
down strum, then on the next up strum we add little finger down,
take it off for the next down strum and then the & after 4 we're lifting off the
second finger to get the Dsus2. 1, 2, 3 & 4 & 1, 2, 3 & 4 & 1.
There»'s quite a few advantages with this idea. The sus chords being on
the thinnest stings goes really nicely with the up picks because you are
really accenting those sus chords. You could do any variations. You could
do the sus first, you could do only sus4. Like...
or only sus2
I'm doing variations already. Just explore it. It's a starting point.
Something to have a bit of a go at. The second exercice I'd recommend you
checking out is adding the sus4 on the up strums in old faithful. So old
faithful down, down, up, up, down, down, down, up, up, down. So having down,
down, down,
Now this is just an exercice. You can muck around with it any way you want
it doesn't have to be set. Just trying to give you some starting points to see
the way that the sus chords work well as ornements and as something that
you can incorporate with the strumming patterns. They are mostly better when
they are on the up strokes. They don't have to be for sure, but because
you are accenting those thinnest strings it kind of highlights the melodic
elements of them. That said, this last part I'm going to share with you has
the sus4 placed on the beat. So we have for the D chord 1, 2 & 3 & 4,
1, 2 & 3 & 4 Down, on the beat 2 and the sus,
then off for the out. Down, up, down, 1, 2 & 3 & 4, 1, 2 & 3 & 4
I think experimenting is definitely the key thing here but now that you're
aware of them as well you'll start to recognise them when you're listening
to songs. There's fantastic examples, particularly kind of 90's rock guys,
the acoustic ballads "Dead or Alive" and those kind of things, do a really
nice lines of sus twittles. Particularly on the D chord. Things like...
Where you've got...
that's hammer-on with the little finger, flick-off with the second finger.
Now those things are not easy and for a beginner that's like, NITSUJ had a go
at doing those and wass like "ah, are you kidding me"? So those things you're
going to find pretty difficult. But stay aware of them, keep your ears open
to them. You'll start to hear them in songs maybe you've been playing
already that you can start adding them in. But as well you shouldn't
be afraid of just trying them in songs that you already know
seeing what you come up with. There really is no limit here.
I really hope you have a lot of fun with the sus chords. If you happen to be
over on YouTube please hit that like and subscrire button. I really
appreciate the support. Let me know in the comments of course how you
getting on with all of this stuff. Always love to hear how you're doing.
I'll see you for plenty more lessons very soon.
Now take care of yourselves. Bye bye.