Sus chords

A great way to make your basic major chords a little more interesting is to change them into a sus chord. Sus stands for suspended, of which there are 2 types, sus2 and sus4.

Lets have a look at an example from the key of C major.

C major scale

C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

To play a C major chord, we take the 1st 3rd and 5th notes from the scale. e.g. C, E, G. Sus stands for suspended. If we play a Csus2 chord, it means we replace the 3rd note (E in this case) with the 2nd note (D). Our Csus2 ends up being C, D, G.

Sus4 chords are very similar. You've guessed it! Instead of replacing the E with a D, we now replace it with an F (the 4th note from the scale).

Here's a tab with some easy sus chords.

E|--0-----0-----0-----3-----
B|--0-----3-----3-----3-----
G|--2-----2-----2-----2-----
D|--2-----2-----0-----0-----
A|--0-----0-----------------
E|--------------------------

Asus2 Asus4 Dsus2 Dsus4

Try playing the following chord progression: Dsus2, Asus4, A, E!