Chord Of The Week 13/6/15 - The Holdsworth sus chord

bigjon

'Sus' is short for suspended - hanging notes that want to 'drop' and resolve to their usual positions in the chord. So a C chord with the notes C(1st) E(3rd) and G(5th) might have a suspended 2nd D note and be a Csus2 chord C D & G, or it might have a suspended 4th F note and be a Csus4 C F G. Or it might even have both, and be a Csus chord C D F and G with both a suspended 2nd D note and a suspended 4th F note, both of which have a strong pull to the missing note E (the 3rd) in the middle.

Four notes that close together are nigh-on impossible to do on the guitar, but they can just about be fitted on the fretboard in order thus:

Csus: 8530xx

The most common open-position version of a Csus shunts the suspended notes to the top 2 strings:

Csus: x3x031

And this is the approach that Allan Holdsworth takes, though because he's Allan he plays it all in closed-position, and spreads the voicing as much as possible so that the non-suspended notes are a 5th apart on the bottom two strings and the suspended notes are a 6th apart on the top two strings, leading to this barely-playable monstrosity - 

Csus: 8 10 x x 6 10

This chord (in D so up two frets) is the first chord in Allan's tune Looking Glass which you can watch here - there's a screen wipe which obscures the view of the first chord but it's repeated in full view at 0:27 :-)

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 97 discussions at

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index

mellowsun

Thanks for this series of Holdsworth chords. I must say, I'm not a fan of his chord voicings, but it does get you thinking about different ways of playing chords.

Going back to an earlier entry where you had the Holdsworth add4 chords: I do like hearing those semitone intervals between the 3rd and the 4th, and then moving the bass around so that the interval becomes 2nd/3rd and #4/5th, e.g. arpeggiating between

7 x 0 6 3 x

x 0 7 6 3 0

3 x 0 6 3 x

2 x 0 2 3 x