Suspended 2nd Chords
Not all guitar techniques need to be difficult. Every now and then you find some tricks that sound good but are incredibly easy to play. This is the case for the suspended second chords: they can be learned in few minutes — yet sound sophisticated and “professional”
Among the musicians that used suspended second chords in their songs we have Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, the Edge (U2), Andy Summers (the Police), Keith Richards (Rolling Stones), Joe Satriani, and John Petrucci (Dream Theater). If these chords worked for them, they will work for you too!
How to Play Them
Let’s start with the practical things: here are some shapes you may use to play suspended second chords. Get your guitar and try to play them!
All shapes are movable, and as you can see the first two are just modified power chords. This means that if you know how to play power chords already, you can learn how to use the sus2 chords immediately.
The Theory
As you know from our previous lesson about triads on the guitar, a triad has 3 notes. These notes are called (in order) the root, the 3rd, and the 5th of the chord. For instance, a C major triad is made by the notes C, E, G: the note C is the root of the chord, the note E is the 3rd of the chord and the note G is the 5th of the chord. To obtain a suspended second chord, we need to do two things:
- Eliminate the 3rd of the chord. In the C chord case this means to NOT play the note E.
- Instead of the 3rd, play the 2nd note of the chord. The 2nd is the note 2 fret higher than the root on the guitar. In the case of the C chord the second is the note D.
In other words the Csus2 chord is made by the notes C, D, G.
The same procedure works also for minor chords. If you take the Am chord (A, C, E), you just eliminate the third (the note C) and add the second (the note B), to obtain an Asus2 (A, B, E).
A final remark: suspended second chords are neither major nor minor.
Ok, How Do I Use Them?
Here’s when you expect things to be difficult — except they are not! You simply need to take any chord progression (it can be from a song you know if you are playing a cover, or you can compose it), and substitute some or all the chord (either major or minor) with the corresponding suspended chord.
Let’s make a couple of examples: the chord progression Em, C, D, B may become one of the following:
- Esus2, C, Dsus2, B
- Em, Csus2, D, B
- Em, Csus2, Dsus2, B
- Esus2, Csus2, Dsus2, Bsus2 (this one may sound a little strange, see below)
or any other combination of the original chords or suspended chords. You have to trust your ears to tell you which substitutions you like, and which ones you don’t. For instance some people will perceive the substitution of B with Bsus2 as “wrong” (there are reasons for that, but we’ll cover them in another lesson), other will think it’s perfectly fine. What do YOU think?
One Last Example
I’m not going to name it, but here’s a famous riff using the shapes we have just seen:
Can you spot the song?
And now that you learned the suspended 2nd chord, the next thing you need to do is to learn how to use it in a guitar chord progression together with other interesting chords. Click ont he button below to find out how
