Suspension (part 2)
May 7, 2008 by Les Hmye
I have talked about Sus4 and how to improvise it with the 3 basic chords earlier. Sus2 is another form of suspension that can also be improvised with the 3 basic chords.
Let’s take a C chord (C Major chord) as example. A C-Sus2 chord is usually written as C2.
For a C chord, we play the 1, 3 and 5 notes (i.e., C, E, G notes) simultaneously.
For a C4 chord, we play the 1, 4 and 5 notes (i.e., C, F and G notes) simultaneously.
For a C2 chord, we play the 1, 2 and 5 notes (i.e., C, D and G notes) simultaneously.
The Sus2 chords are use very often in place of the Chord I and Chord IV. That means, in the C scale, instead of playing C (Chord I), I often play C2 instead simply because it gives a more modern sound. The same goes for the
F chord in the C scale. That is, instead of playing an F (Chord IV), I often replace it with an F2.
Figure 1: C2
Figure 2: F2
I shall talk about the improvisation of Sus2 using the 3 basic chords on my next post.
[...] 7, 2008 by Les Hmye Sus2 are usually used only on Chord I and Chord IV, so there is no need to learn Sus2 for other chords [...]
[...] what we are doing to Chord I by mixing it with Chord V is essentially producing a Chord I2 (i.e., Sus2 of Chord I) [...]