• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

What does A sus2 mean on a guitar chord

It means replace the third (the note that makes the chord major or minor) and replace it with a major second (whole step from the root). Dissonant goodness.
 
Actually i suppose on the guitar that would be a whole step from the 8...just fret an A maj chord and drop the third a whole step..
 
The link above is good. Knowing how to finger chords is great, but knowing how they are used is better. The use of the term suspended literally refers to the suspense or tension of an unresolved chord.

In terms of the Xsus2, 99% of the time, it's gonna be a momentary kind of chord begging to be resolved. A Dsus2, with the E (2nd) on the top E string is begging to resolve up, to the the 3rd (F#: first string second fret) of a regular D chord. The Neil Young song, After the Gold Rush, starts with a sus2 in the piano intro. I'd bet money that he wrote the song on the guitar (because its very idiomatic to the guitar and his style), then the piano copied the part for the intro. Once the song gets started, they skip the sus chord and just start on the "normal" chord in succeeding lines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e3m_T-NMOs

If you have a song in which the melody itself has that second on the same strong beat with a chord, a transcriber will often show that chord in the chart, just to be technically correct. For a beginner, you're not really going to need to play that chord usually.

You'll hear these chords on acoustic folk style of playing a lot, usually with the 3rd hammered on immediately. Otherwise, a harmony that stays on the chord is most likely going to be kinda New Age-y. When you play guitar for years and years, it's common to experiment with unresolved chords just for the heck of it and substitute them for a more normal chord..
 
Last edited:
I looked at a few Net charts for that song but didn't see the sus2 in there. Maybe you have a songbook or something that includes it? At any rate, a lot of net folks don't use the chord.
 
Now I see the usage. It is in an example of using the chord without resolution immediately following, except in the middle part where it jumps around from the chord. And slowblood has it just right.

Man, I wish there was the Internet to teach me songs when I was first learning. That dude is cool.
 
Last edited:
Bay Arean said:
The link above is good. Knowing how to finger chords is great, but knowing how they are used is better. The use of the term suspended literally refers to the suspense or tension of an unresolved chord.

In terms of the Xsus2, 99% of the time, it's gonna be a momentary kind of chord begging to be resolved. A Dsus2, with the E (2nd) on the top E string is begging to resolve up, to the the 3rd (F#: first string second fret) of a regular D chord. The Neil Young song, After the Gold Rush, starts with a sus2 in the piano intro. I'd bet money that he wrote the song on the guitar (because its very idiomatic to the guitar and his style), then the piano copied the part for the intro. Once the song gets started, they skip the sus chord and just start on the "normal" chord in succeeding lines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e3m_T-NMOs

If you have a song in which the melody itself has that second on the same strong beat with a chord, a transcriber will often show that chord in the chart, just to be technically correct. For a beginner, you're not really going to need to play that chord usually.

You'll hear these chords on acoustic folk style of playing a lot, usually with the 3rd hammered on immediately. Otherwise, a harmony that stays on the chord is most likely going to be kinda New Age-y. When you play guitar for years and years, it's common to experiment with unresolved chords just for the heck of it and substitute them for a more normal chord..
Click to expand...

I have never not understood so much in a BARF post before. :laughing

<< knows nothing about music, but can play the 3 rhythm chords for the freebird solo all day long
 
:laughing

I tried to explain it clearly....ah well....after playing guitar for the last 46 years or so of my life, I wish I could give shortcuts thru all the confusion....I still discover things everyday that convince me that beginners focus on the wrong things and that even most guitar teachers ain't that helpful....

A good example are those 3,000 guitar chords books. Wrong approach. You could spend the next three lifetimes trying to memorize 3,000 chords by rote or you could whittle it down to chord FORMS, that are just movable by key.

When I first started playing, Beatles songs were the rage. Most of the sheet music had them in piano keys with flats, even tho' most of the tunes were in easy guitar keys. Had to learn to transpose for that reason. Looking at an Aflat chord is daunting for a beginner. Getting a capo and playing a G chord is a lot simpler. That type o' thing. But the sheet music publishers didn't care, nor the piano player they hired to transcribe the tunes. If you say the premise was that everyone played piano and liked those keys, you'd be wrong. Everybody wanting to learn in those days had guitars.

Now, I bet there is some cat on Youtube who will tell you that, I hope!!!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top