Hey Friend,

Another set of triads you will run into on a regular basis are the suspended chords. If you're a fan of The Who, U2 or Rush, you'll see suspended chords smattered all throughout their music.

Many times, when you play a suspended chord, the next chord in the progression will be the major chord. For example, If you played a Dsus4, the next chord is often a D major chord. Traditionally, the suspended note (either the second or fourth note of the scale) was held over (suspended) from the previous chord in the progression. It's as if the previous chord was setting up the next chord, and then the suspended chord was setting up the major chord that came right after.

Musicians don't really look at it that way any more, but a suspended chord does set you up nicely to move to your major chord, which is usually the tonic chord.

Just a little refresher of our example key...

D, E, F#, G, A, B, C# and back to D

We're still dealing with three notes in a suspended chord, so in the case of Dsus2, the notes are D, E and A (1, 2, 5). Notice the '2' in the chord name? That's telling us it's using the second note in the scale rather than the major third note.

The Dsus4 chord is like the Dsus2, except now it's the fourth note in the scale instead of the second. The notes are D, G and A (1, 4, 5).

Here's a little tip for playing these two chords. Keep your index finger barred across the fifth fret on the first and second strings. Your third finger stays put on the third string, seventh fret, and you can use your pinky for D major and Dsus4 on the second string, seventh and eighth frets, respectively.

I'm showing these examples in the key of D major, but the same principles work in any major key. Want a suspended 4 chord? Raise the scale third note a half step (one fret) to the fourth note and you're there. If you want to get a suspend 2 chord, just lower the scale third note a whole step (two frets) to the second note of the scale.

I'm showing you these common chord constructions to give you some things to play with, but we'll be going back to focusing on the specific keys soon. 

Any questions?

Peace~

Dave

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