Re: sus2 chords

At 15:40 16.08.2005, you wrote:
>Dude, there are no such things as sus2 chords. The
>tension exists in the 4th replacing the 3rd. A sus2
>chord is a sus4 (or simply sus) chord in 1st
>inversion. Accordging to you a Csus2 is CDG, but a
>Gsus is GCD. You may as well call an Am (ACE) a C6
>without the 5th - CE_A.

If one should apply correct theory strictly, there are no such thing as a 5-chord either. The "power-chords" that are often notated a 5, for instance G5, are just an interval (a fifth) with a double root. By definition a chord has three or more notes, and a 5-chord has only two. But it is common practise to call them chords and notate them as 5-chords. I stick to practise, not the theory.

This takes me to the sus chords. One may say that there is no such thing as a sus2 chord, just as there is no such thing as a 5-chord. But if you read music notation for guitar, you will often see sus2 chords. So even if they do not exist in theory, they do exist in practise. The relation between the sus2 and 2us4 chords are explained in
http://www.torvund.net/guitar/Theory/11-2-The_sus4_chord.asp.

If one should apply the theory to very common and very guitaristic phrases notated as
D - Dsus4 - D - Dsus2 - D or A - Asus4 - A - Asus2 - A,
it should have been
D - Dsus4 - D - Asus4 - D, or A - Asus4 - A - Esus4 - A.

But this would also be misleading, as the chords in these two sequences function as variations of either the D chord or the A chord, and should be notated in some way or another as a D chord or and A chord. And common practise is to notate them as sus2. And after all, the tension in the
"sus2" - to the extent that there is any tension - against the root and the fifth, comes from the second.

As I write in http://www.torvund.net/guitar/chords/sus2.asp , the sus2 is sometimes written as add2 or add9 chords, but this is not really correct either. So I think I will stick to the sus2 notation.

Olav Torvund
http://www.torvund.net