Chords for The coolest chord you should know

_ [Cm] _ _ _ Hey, how's it?
_ [F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Cm] _ You might be listening to this right now thinking, hmm, _ [F] _ that's pretty.
_ [G] _ Oh, okay.
[Cm] _ _ _ _ Yeah, so what I'm playing [F] here, _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
[Cm] all these chords are just variations _ [F] of what we call [Bm] sus chords.
_ [Db] _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ _ [Ab] _
_ Now, if you've never heard of _ [Db] _ sus chords before, _
_ _ [Fm] _ _ [Gb] I can assure you that _ [B] _ _ _ _ there's nothing
[Abm] _ _ [Db] sus _ about [B] them.
_ _ [N] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ I'm sorry.
So what is a sus chord anyway?
The word sus is short for suspended, and it comes from traditional classical theory,
_ where we use it to describe _ delaying the resolution from one chord to the next by suspending
notes from a chord over to the next chord.
And usually this would take place between chord V going to [G] chord I.
So if we're in the key of C major, for instance, and we've got a G7 _ chord V _ resolving to [C] chord
I, C major, _ we could [G] suspend _ _ one of the notes of this V chord.
So for instance, this F _ _ over to the C, [F] _ _ _ and now we have a C sus 4, because the F in the
context of C is the fourth, 1, 2, 3, 4, _ _ [C] before we would resolve it normally to C major.
_ We could [G] also suspend the D in the V chord.
So for example, if you have a V7 voice like this, _ going to I.
_ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ So that's where it comes from.
But all you really need to know in a practical sense is that a sus chord is where we swap
out the third of our chord for either the fourth or the second.
So if we've got a C major chord like this, _ _ we could play, instead of the third, play the fourth.
_ _ _ Now we have a C sus 4.
_ Or we could also play the second instead of the third, _ and we have a C sus 2.
_ Cool.
So now we know there are two types of sus chords, sus 4 and sus 2.
_ We're going to take this another step further.
Because the sus chord works really well as a V chord, we're going to make this C major
of ours a dominant chord. _
So to do that, we're going to add the flat 7th.
So the flat 7 in the key of [G] C _ [B] would be [C] B flat. _ _ _ _ _
_ Now apply the sus, _ _ _ _ C7 sus 4, _ or we [Gm] can have _ _ C7 sus 2.
_ _ [Bb] You can also do both.
You can have sus 4 and sus 2. _ _ _ _
The next step would be to improve the voicing of this chord.
_ So instead of voicing everything in one octave like this, _ _ _ with just one [F] hand, _ let's drop
some notes down the octave.
So I'm going to choose to drop the root [C] and the fifth.
_ Put them down here, put our flat 7 [Gm] over here, _ _ and then our 9th or the 2nd, and then the
11th [F] or the 4th.
_ [Bb] _ _
_ _ If you look at this carefully, you'll notice that we're actually playing two chords.
We're playing a B flat _ triad, B flat major triad in our right hand, and we're playing
_ [C] _ the outline of a C major chord in our left hand.
_ You can leave out the fifth of this and just play the [Bb] root.
[C] It wouldn't make a big difference to the sound.
So we basically have a C root, _ and we're playing a major triad a whole step below the [Bb] C, _
_ [C] and
we get our sus chord. _ _
[Bb] Now you can _ label this as a C7 _ [C] sus 4 add 9. _
You could say [Bb] C11.
There's a bunch of ways you could label it, _ _ [C] but the gist of it is that [Bb] it's a _ C7 sus. _
_ _ [C] _ _ Now we're going to take this one step further _ and add a major 7 to the triad that is in
our right hand at the moment.
So we've got a B flat [Bb] triad here.
_ [C] _ _ We're going [Bb] to add a major [Db] 7th here.
[Bb] _ So I have a major 7 chord in our right hand _ with the C root. _
B flat major 7 over C, _ [C] which gives you a _ [F] C13 sus.
_ _ _ _ _ Really nice.
[Ab] Okay great, so now we have this really fancy sounding voicing.
_ How do we actually use it?
Well, a sus chord is great to use on any chord 5.
So here's an example _ of Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely.
When I get to the 5 chord, I'll play the sus chord and see how nice it sounds.
_ _ _ [B] _
_ [E] _ _ _ [Ebm] _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [Ab] _
_ [B] _ _ _ [Dbm] _ _ [Gb] _ _
[Bb] _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ Okay, some bonus tips to think of when you're playing sus chords.
_ You can _ mess around with the inversion of the chord you're playing in your right hand.
So we've established we have this major 7 [Bb] chord _ _ [C] over our root. _ _ _
Now I don't [Bb] have to play this major 7 chord like this.
That's root position.
I can move it [F] around. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ Depending on how you want to resolve it, _ _ _ _ _ you can swap around the inversion.
_ Doesn't really matter. _
_ Whatever sound you prefer. _ _
_ That's one thing you can do.
The other thing you can do is put in the third of the chord.
So we went through this whole process and described a sus chord as not having a third,
swapping it out for either the fourth or the second.
_ But it's not [F] set in stone that you can't have the third in there.
Just when you voice it with the third, _ just try to voice the third above the fourth.
Normally that sounds a bit more pleasing.
Because then you have the interval of a major 7th rather than a minor 9.
_ _ So a major 7 is not as dissonant sounding as _ this.
[C] You could for instance have something like [F] this.
_ [Bb] _ _ As our _ Bbmaj7 over our C.
[C] If you add the [F] third up here. _ _
_ _ _ That doesn't sound bad.
That sounds quite pretty actually. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ If you change the third to a minor third, [C] then you've got a gorgeous _ minor 13 sound.
So instead of a _ _ Cmaj7 with the _ _ [Dm] _
Bbmaj7 [C] on top of that, change [Cm] that third to a minor.
_ _ _ _ _ Really [Dm] nice.
[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Ok, so now having said all of that, here is Isn't She Lovely again.
But this time I'm going to put in _ _ way too many sus chords.
Alright, here we go.
[Dbm] _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ [Db] _ _ [Gb] _ _
_ [E] _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ _
[C] _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _
_ [B] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Ab] _ _ _ [D] _ _ [Gbm] _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _
_ [D] _ [E] _ [Bb] _ _ [Bm] _ _ _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _
[E] _ _ _ [D] _ [E] _ _ _
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Cheers, till [E] the next one. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Gb] _ _ [E] _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ [D] _ _ _ [Db] _ [Abm] _
_ _ [Ebm] _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ [A] _