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What is a 'sus' chord and what does 'sus' mean? |
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You have slightly answered the question here in the title. A 'sus' chord is short for a suspended chord. To form a suspended chord, you would start be taking a triad (in this example I'll use C or C-E-G) and replace the 3rd with either a 2nd or a 4th. Csus2 --> C-D-G So here I've replaced the 3rd, which would be E in this case, and replaced it with a D to form Csus2 or with F to form a Csus4. NOTE: If you see a chord with just a 'sus' after it, it implies that it is a 'sus4' chord. |
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Every chord has to have a triad which makes it 'stable. i.e. the chord of C major has 3 notes C E G. The middle note determines wheter the chord is major or minor, in the case of C the note E tells us it is major. If the middle note had been Eb it would have been C minor. Now with suspended chords we take out the middle note so the chord doesn't know if it's major or minor i.e. it's 'suspended'. But - we have to have a triad i.e. 3 notes in a chord so to make it stable we add another note maybe a 4th, 2nd, 9th etc. So in the case of C we take out the middle note E and replace it with lets say a 4th (F) giving us C F G and we now have a C 'suspended' 4th, written Csus4. |
