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Now I can teach you about suspended chords.
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So, what is a suspended chord, first of all?
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They're not chords
that just like hanging around a lot.
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So, first of all you need to know what a "triad" is.
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Now, and triads are not
Asian dudes with machine guns.
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In a musical sense.
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So, what we are talking about here
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is a triad that is a three note chord.
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Tri, prefix for three,
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so it's a three note chord.
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Three notes chords consist of a root note,
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a third and a fifth,
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wich is really the first note,
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the third note and the fifth note of a Major scale.
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Now, it's the third note of the triad
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that determines whether the chord is major or minor.
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So, if we were to have a look at, say, an A chord,
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then notes in A would be A, B,
C would be the third, D, E.
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Now, actually, because of the key signature,
the note C would be a C#,
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to make an A major chord.
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If you just go now
and play an A chord, an A Major chord
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. . .
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and then you straight away afterward
play an A minor chord
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...
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you'd notice that only one note is different.
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And that's the C# on the B string,
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second fret moves to C natural note
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(plays) in the first fret.
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So, it is in fact only one note every time
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that changes between a major and a minor chord.
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Sometimes that note is doubled
in your chord voicing,
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just to warn you, it’s just not like
one note on the guitar;
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harmonically it's one note that changes.
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Now, suspended chords
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take away the third of the chord
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and replace it with another note.
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So therefore, suspended chords
are neither major or minor,
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and they have a very airy sound.
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So, if I just give you some demonstrations here:
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A Major:
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. . .
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Old happy sounding A Major.
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Now, if I move that...
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the third of the chord,
which is the note C#,
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if I move that up one semitone,
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to D
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...
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we now have an Asus4 sound.
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. . .
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Here it's kinda hovering,
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it is kind of hanging about a bit, that one.
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. . .
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Then we go back to A,
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. . .
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Now, if I lift off my little finger now:
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. . .
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which is kind of going down...
that note down two frets,
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because if I go down just one
it gets to the minor chord,
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...
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we get an Asus2 chord.
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So, we've got now A:
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. . .
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Asus4:
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. . .
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A
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. . .
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and Asus2:
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. . .
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Quite a simple movement.
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Now, I'm not doing close-ups here at the chords,
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because it's quite a few chords and a few songs
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that I'm going to go through in this lesson,
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so, please go and check out the chords at:
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www.justinguitar.com
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you click on "chords" which is on the left hand side,
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or "chords and scales" I think it says actually,
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and then in the top group
there are suspended chords.
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It shouldn't be very difficult for you to find them,
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and it explains all the different
fingering choices as well,
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so please go and check that out.
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So, that was A chord.
You can hear we had A:
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. . .
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Very common sound.
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That is the A chord.
Now if we move it onto D,
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. . .
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play a regular D chord,
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then we add our little finger down,
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. . .
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that's Dsus4.
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. . .
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Back to regular D,
lift off our second finger,
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. . .
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we get Dsus2
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. . .
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and then back to D.
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Now, just using those two types of chord shapes,
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I can show you
a couple of the different ways it was used.
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The first way you use suspended chords
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is as an ornament,
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it's to kind of decorate when you play.
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So, if you got a D chord for ages and ages
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and you just want to do
something a little bit different to it,
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then it just... you know
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. . .
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If you start to get a bit bored, you could:
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. . .
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You can just kind of add them in whenever you like,
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and they work on major and minor chords.
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I'll show you some tricks on that in a sec.
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Some famous examples
I can think off the top of my head was...
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and old song from the 80's or early 90's...
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"Dead or Alive", by Bon Jovi,
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it's got a really nice example
right at the beginning,
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where it goes:
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. . .
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It's a little decoration on the D chord there.
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Another good example
is "Summer of 69" by Bryan Adams.
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It's actually a keyboard part,
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but that whole song is doing a...
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Yeah, it starts on Dsus2, D,
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sus4, D
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sus2, D,
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and then it goes to Asus2, (plays)
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A regular, Asus4, A.
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. . .
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So you can see then,
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in that instance it's kind of
using the suspended chord
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as a riff, not just as an ornament.
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So, so far we've talked about D Major
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and then going to the sus,
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and A major going to the sus,
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and like I said, it also works for minor chords.
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So if we start with a D minor chord:
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. . .
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add the little finger (plays),
we get Dsus4 again.
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Back to D minor:
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...
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And then lift off your first finger (plays)
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and you get Dsus2.
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So the sus4 and the sus2 are the same,
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just we've put a minor in the middle
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instead of a major.
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...
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So a good example of using that one
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for both a Dm and Am is...
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"Loosing my Religion", by R.E.M.,
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where it's got this little:
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. . .
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You can hear very clearly that
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he's used the suspended chords
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to kind of make a riff.
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Also the Rolling Stones on "Paint it Black"
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kind of uses it on the D minor at the beginning:
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. . .
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It changes a bit to that last part.
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. . .
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Very last bit's a bit different,
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but the first part of it is the sus chords.
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So, that's taken care of Dsus4 and Dsus2,
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Asus4 and Asus2.
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If we go on to E now,
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We have a regular E chord,
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if we put down our little finger
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underneath the third finger,
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...
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we get Esus4. (plays)
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And back to E.
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Now, we can't get...
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There's no such chord
as an Esus2 chord in an open position.
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I mean, there kind of is just later on,
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but for you right now, there's not.
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Because if we lift off the first finger,
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we get to E minor, not Esus2.
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Yeah?
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You can play it like this, (plays)
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like a big barre chord later on,
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but that's not the one for you right now.
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Again, there's quite a few tunes
that use the Esus chord.
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Another good example of that one is...
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"It's Only Natural" by Crowded House,
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which is E, Esus4
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. . .
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Then Asus4 to A
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Asus4 to A and back to E.
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. . .
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Then it goes into barre chords
for the rest of the tune.
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But the verses...
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You can hear it's kind of using it like a riff,
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but it's not really a riff,
it's just a decoration.
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Now...
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the only other ones that I think
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that are kind of useful for you to learn
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as a starting one is maybe a Csus.
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Now, C is a bit weird,
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because remember I told you that sometimes
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you have to change the third of a chord
to make a suspended chord.
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Well, in the case of a C open chord,
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we've got the note E,
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which is the third of the chord.
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It occurs twice.
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So, what I'm just gonna show you
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is a nice kind of decoration,
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but it's not really a true C suspended chord,
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because you might hit the first string.
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There's more of that on the web site.
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But just if you start with C:
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...
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put down your little finger
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in front of your second finger,
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underneath your third
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. . .
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You get Csus4, (plays),
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back to C,
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lift off your second finger, (plays)
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and you get a Csus2.
Back to C,
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which is just a really nice change.
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. . .
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You can hear It's just got a kind of comfortable,
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easy feeling for some rhythm guitar.
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So, OK.
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That will do for now.
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If you want to check out
some more suspended chords,
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I think every open suspended chord I can think of
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is on the web site,
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so go and have check that out.
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And then try and apply them
to any songs that you've got...
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where you've got a chord for a long time.
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See if you can incorporate
some of those suspended chords in,
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to make your rhythm guitar playing
a little more interesting.
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Have fun, see you soon.
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Bye!