No doubt non musos around here were baffled by Johnny C’s recent reference to ‘sus chords’. I don’t use the phrase myself (they’re suspended chords), but Australians (Aussies) are big on abbreviations (abbrevos?) e.g. barbies, tinnies, ‘this arvo’, etc…
So, having kicked the jargon into touch, let this man – ironically, an Australian – explain what such chords are and give examples. He does so very well. Once your brain has assimilated what they sound like, let us hear any great, or better still unusual, examples of the suspended chord in music.
Caveat: I’m banning all examples from The Who and U2 otherwise there’d be no room for anyone else.
I’ll allow the ‘honorary suspended chord’, the greatest example of which is probably ‘Alright Now’, which goes from A to a sort of D, but the sort of D sounds like a sort of A sus4.
Over to you…
Free falling by Tom Petty.
(* tries to recall tune in one’s mind*) probably – certainly, most of Tom’s songs seem to be big, airy, expansive things with very few chords…
Basically a D shape which goes from D to D sus2 to D to D sus 4 with a capo on the second fret.
A Hard Days Hight
G7add9sus4
Vaguely remembering from Ian McDonalds Revolution In The Head, the HJHs work is littered with sus chords (and other variants) because either:
John Lennon was too lazy to move his fingers very much, or
the use of such chords is emblematic of the uniqueness and unexpected surprise of their work.
I’m plumping for option a, although there is probably some truth in the pseudo intellectual b****cks of option b
Nice one, Ridge – I’d thought of AHDN too. It’s a perhaps unusual example of a hook, of sorts, being a clanging suspended chord at the very start of a song. Certainly, because it’s unresolved, the listener is subconsciously on tenterhooks waiting for what comes next (hoping it will resolve).
Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’ boils down to a suspended chord riff. The ‘Hendrix chord’ is a suspended chord of sorts (though I’m open to persuasion otherwise).
Here’s Focus with ‘Sylvia’, which is full of suspense:
More Winston O’Boogie laziness:
Had to check this, because I ain’t no guitarist, but I (sort of) remember finding this incredibly easy to play.
John Lennon: Happy Christmas (War Is Over)
A-Asus2-Asus4-A
(all he’s doing is lifting his third finger, and then putting it down in the wrong place)
Similarly the chorus from You’ve got to Hide Your Love Away, built around D
This one’s fun. I heard it on BBC4’s Guitar Heroes at the BBC last week – don’t think I’d heard it before. A fabulous intro full of suspended chords that basically has nothing to do with the song itself, which has *another* intro of its own (beginning at 1:36)! The Middle-eight (around 4:00) is full of suspended chords too.
The Wiki page on these people offers the amusing suggestion that their record company changed the band-pic cover of one of their LPs in case their features were putting people off! I can’t help thinking of Gerard Depardieu with an oversized shirt when looking at Nick Garvey.
But it remains a blistering performance.
I wore out 2 copies of the 12″ of this. A fantastic sounding record which still makes the hairs on the back of my neck dance with joy.
Excellent thread Colin. very useful to hear a little about these technical aspects of music making although I don’t expect many of us non-musos will dare to post one despite the fine explanations from you and Justin.
I presume that any instrument that can play a chord (mandolin, harp, harpsichord, organ etc) can produce a sus chord.
Yes. In fact, one of THE best examples of a suspended chord doing its thing/a composer getting maximum value out of it is the ‘payoff moment’ in ‘Nessun Dorma’. When Pavarotti seems to be peaking it occurs over a huge orchestrated suspended chord that hauls the listener into the stratosphere for an extended moment before resolving and letting everyone down to earth again with a curiously warm, fuzzy, satisfied feeling.
Pavvo was not someone I was expecting here. Great example.
The beauty of this thread is that now that we laypeople have had this explained so well, we’ll probably start to remember where we’ve heard these chords.
They give a clear sense of unfinished business: a musical cliffhanger. Rather like a series of dots at the end of a sentence. To be continued………
Here’s one. Sus2s, mellotron, and an outrageously gurning Anderson
https://youtu.be/-0GAuexrVzo
Ah, a very sophisticated example, Deco!
…the opposite of which would be ‘Whatever You Want’ by Status Quo. As long as people only want Asus4/A, the Quo will happily provide it.
This one is an archetypical sus chord sequence:
Neil Young uses them a lot. See here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYUgGs9IStY
It’s been mentioned that Pete Townsend loves his sus chords. How would you fancy hearing them on banjos? Here’s an ad for Tommy down bluegrass style.
http://thebluegrasssituation.com/event/bgs-presents-hillbenders-tommy-bluegrass-opry-mint-la
Here’s a taste:
@colin-h – thanks to your post, I have now done very little for the last two hours except “binge” on Justin Guitar’s You Tube lessons and the tips of the finger on my left hand are now very sore. (*smiley-grimacy face*)
I learned a few chords and “House of the Rising Sun” when I was about 12, have a guitar (or two) gathering dust in a corner and think that – one day – I will learn to play the b****y things rather than just occasionally pick one of them up, strum it for about 30 seconds and put it back down.
Anyway, now suitably enthused, I will practice the Am pentatonic scale (whatever that is) and I will stretch my fingers so that I can do the power chords properly.
I may still only pick up my guitar to “noodle”, but at least I will be able to “noodle” better.
At last, some good has come out of The Afterword! 🙂
Ah, there’s a lot of good come out of The Afterword one way and another.
Here’s a really straightforward example of a sus chord. The first bar is Asus (ie the first five guitar chords – dah-dah dah dah dah) then the second bar is a straight A, with the same guitar rhythm. Then that is repeated ie bars 1 and 2 are the same as bars 3 and 4.
Then the vocal comes in and lo and behold the melody goes from D to C sharp, in other words the notes that make an Asus and A major chord respectively.
The song (April Sun In Cuba by Dragon) is maybe not known to youse in that there England, but it was a huge hit in Australia and New Zealand, where Dragon came from originally. The song was written by keyboard player Paul Hewson who died many years ago. The guitar riff was written, not surprisingly by the guitar player Robert Taylor who now teaches guitar but doesn’t play with the current version of the band, whose only original member is bassist Todd Hunter. The original lead singer in the clip is Todd’s brother Marc who also left us too early.
Something about that guy brought to mind these chancers – and another example of a song basically being nothing more than a suspended chord resolving:
The Rickenbacker 12-string was basically invented for sus chords, as here:
Needles & Pins – That was probably the first time I ever knowingly encountered a sus chord way back in 1964
Here’s an interesting one, where a single plucked note played by Neil Young (I think) on top of an E/A sequence gives the whole song its unsettling vibe.
The outro of “Saturday night’s all right for fighting” comes to mind…..actually starts at about 3 min 30 sec in this live version….
It was inevitable that the Who would do a cover of this – and they did.
Inevitable because of the lyrical attitude? Or because of the descending series of resolving Sus4s in the outro?
Both – but moreso because of the chords. If someone asked you to write a pastiche Townshend song it would sound exactly like this! Swaggering, bombastic, brimming with serial sus4-ing…
As we know, Donovan invented suspended chords and his catalogue is full of them. Here’s Sailing Homeward with a textbook example sus chord at the end of each verse on the line “for I’ve a long, long way to go”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnjhmoiIXPc
Well, the suschordmeister announced himself pretty early on…
Fact of the day: erstwhile Shadows and Marty Wilde’s Wildcats bassist Brian “Liquorice” Locking played upright bass on that record (Catch The Wind)
And erstwhile Krew Kat, along with Big Jim Sullivan of course. Responsible for this early fave recording of a Chet Atkins tune.
https://youtu.be/XSrbx_B1vfg
Good find.
On a more sombre note, it was Brian “Liquorice” Locking who introduced Hank to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and, indirectly, helped turn Cliff onto Christianity.
So it’s swings and roundabouts with “Liquorice”, isn’t it?
It takes all sorts…
The writer of the original piece isn’t an Australian I don’t think even though he does the abbreviated term sus chords.
Just on abbreviations an Irish mate of mine commented, your biggest sporting venue is the Melbourne Cricket Ground which has the initial M.C.G. But no, even that is too much for you and you all just call it The G.
Don’t get me started. The Aussie love of abbreviation has reached ridiculous proportions recently with the ugly-sounding “firey” (fireman) and “ambo” (ambulance man).
And the “sus” word is only an abbreviation in the sense that it’s used in sheet music for the names of chords in shortened form – eg Dsus4
This arvo, once you’ve renewed your rego and been to the servo, taken the bins out for the garbo and taken the kids to kindy, you can make yourself comfy, crack a tinnie from the bottleo, maybe put a snag on the barbie, watch the footy and see what the postie brings.
never liked firey, ambo or servo
no worries about the others
Thanks Mike, “bottle-o” is another one I love to hate (it’s short for bottle shop or off-licence btw)
And here in Perth we have the lovely old harbour town of Freo (Fremantle).
I was in Sydney last week where rugby league is king and there was much talk of Russell Crowe’s team the South Sydney Rabbitohs. It’s their full name, so I’m not even sure what it’s an abbreviation of, but it’s a strange one, to be sure.
You could always go for a stubbie at the bowl-o, of course.
http://feral.typepad.com/feral_thoughts/2009/02/how-the-rabbitohs-got-their-name.html
yes the Rabbitohs has a genuine heritage.
Dont Poms abbreviate stuff. Much of our cultural heritage can be sourced back to you.
Don’t you have tradies, chippies, sparkies ?
Chippies and sparkies aren’t abbreviations, more like amusing sobriquets.
Never heard tradies used in the UK.
No. Spark, yes (not sparky); chippy, just about; tradie – ??? never heard it.
The one that always makes me wince is “muso”. As in “Jeez, you’ve got a lot of guitars mate, are you a muso?”
Meanwhile in Australia, this was a big seller
http://i.imgur.com/i19FhYA.jpg
Muso? They’d have never dared to use such abbros in Queen Victoria’s time!
“We are not a muso!”
generic – trades person
Maybe Russell Cro’s surname is an abbo [abbreviation]… Maybe he was born Russell Cromagnon or something…
Is ‘abbo’ still used for native Australians? Or is that too un PC now for even Australians?
Not allowed these days Colin. It’s as toxic as the “P” word in the UK. Although, strangely, the “P” word is still sometimes used in Australia in relation to their cricket team. Go figure.
You mean nobody says ‘pooftahs’ in Oz any more? Surely that would be like the National Anthem being banned in the UK? The word is SO integral to the concept of ‘being an Australian’ – usually introduced with ‘Yah blaaaahdy…’
‘Pooftahs’, (noun, exclamation) is still alive and well and is the go-to ejaculation on hitting your hand whilst using a hammer, etc…
You bash your hand and shout “pooftahs”!!
It seems to me that the word has undergone a certain transition since the days of Monty Python and those philosophy profs at the University of Woolamaloo.
‘Chalkie’ for teacher. Although the first time I heard it used, I thought it was ‘jockey’, a reference, I assumed, to a general lack of height and intelligence. And possible sexual perversion.
You may recall The Pretenders’ Brass in Pocket has a nice hook with both sus4 and a sus2 chords, and Ms Hynde throws another sus2 into the chorus, the cheeky minx.
*hums BIP to self* ooh, I think there’s another fancy numbered chord (poss. a 9th or 11th?) round about the “make you, make you notice, me” bit, too. She’s a saucy one and no mistake.
I’ve been doing my homework and learnt that sus chords are very rare in reggae.
But I stumbled across this Rush song, Distant Early Warning, which has a bit of a reggae beat and opens with a cracking sus chord. Sus chords seem to be a good way of attracting the listener’s attention.
Goopd point, Fatz – you rarely if ever hear them in reggae. I guess reggae is all about setting up a groove and not frightening the horses (with unexpected tension-building chords)!
Those are interesting chords on the Rush song – they have a suspended feel but I wonder are they? A bit like the Police’s ‘Walking On The Moon’: a suspended chord sort of feel about it yet I’m not sure the chords actually are….
You can comment on whether or not a chord is suspended far more knowledgeably than me, Colin. I just read it on Wiki.
But talking of unexpected, tension building chords, surely Prog must be full of them?
I was thinking particularly of the eerie world of Gabriel era Genesis and perhaps the Floyd. While trying to find out if I was right, I stumbled across this …….
http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.15.21.2/mto.15.21.2.cohen.html
Has no-one yet mentioned Brown Sugar?
Check the intro:
Most of those Rolling Stone riffs are played in open G tuning – the strings, played open (without fingering) make the chord G. If Keith puts his first finger across all the strings in the fifth or seventh frets he gets C and D chords; if he then uses his second and third fingers in a certain way he creates suspended versions of those chords. Most of the RS riffs are this sort of thing, e.g. ‘Start Me Up’.
Sorry Colin! I’m wandering seriously off-piste now.
I love a good horn section so I was wondering about brass arrangements using sus chords. I stumbled across this (one of a series of articles) where the writer, Dave Stewart, talks about using brass and what you can achieve with it
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/top-brass-part-3
He writes in such lively way, that even a layman like me can get quite interested.