A Deep Dive Into Sus 4 Chords
What are Sus 4 chords? Why do guitarists love them? How do I use them in chord progressions? Read on to find out!
A chord in it’s most basic form has 3 notes and is called a triad.
There is the root note, which the chord gets it’s letter from, and then two notes above this.
The distance between two notes is called an interval. It is measured in semi tones or half steps.
How do you create sus 4 chords?
We know that there will be two harmonic intervals in a sus 4 chord.
One is an interval of a perfect fourth. This is a distance of five half steps or semitones. For example, if the root note is C then the perfect fourth is F.
The other is a perfect fifth. This is a distance of seven half steps or semitones. For example, if the root note is C then the perfect fourth is G.
You will therefore see the notes in sus4 chords written like this:
1st 4th 5th
This is like the formula or recipe for sus4 chords, which you can repeat with any root note to construct any sus4 chord.
So in our example with the root or 1st note C, we can create a C sus 4 chord with the notes : C F and G
Sus chords generally have an emotive, ambiguous and intense sound. Sus 4 is focused, tense and can create a sense of conflict.
Sus 4 chords are found commonly in rock and pop music. Part of the reason for this is the versatility with which they can be used in chord progressions. I’ll discuss this a little later in this post.
But they also feature because of the ease of playing some of them on guitar.
For example here’s a chord diagram of an open A major and A minor chord with an Asus4 for comparison.
You can see that this is a simple move of one finger to change the chord. This makes it easy to incorporate in rapid changes or riffs.
A similar thing occurs with D major, D minor and D sus4.
And also E major, E minor and E sus 4.
I also happen to think that sus4 chords sound great on guitar, as well as being easy to use. This is why you’ll come across them widely, particularly in indie or jangle rock songs. Add a bit of chorus or delay to a clean guitar sounds when playing these chords, arpeggiated or otherwise, and you can’t really go wrong.
So we know what sus4 chords are and how and why guitarists like to use them.
Let’s now dive into how to use them in a few chord progressions.
Simply moving from a major chord to the sus4 version is very common and showcases the sus sound.
Here's another major chord turned into a sus4. Doing this means that the I chord and V sus4 share two notes in common. This helps to smooth out the transition between them.
In minor keys it's common to use the major V chord borrowed from the parallel major key. In this example using the v sus4 chord provides a pleasing step down to the major V chord.
This example introduces a really popular Dorian method - ending your chord progression with the IV sus4 to IV change. Here it provides some uplifting brightness after the first two minor chords.