Chord Of The Week 21/5/16 - a Bbsus4/C from '1999' by Prince

bigjon

Still on the Prince theme, here's a wonderful funk chord which he toggles to in the main riff of 1999. The riff toggles between the I and IV chords in the key of Fmajor in the rhythm |. I IV _ |I IV I . |

The basic shape of the chord sequence on strings 2 and 3 is F x x x 10 10 x for the I chord and Bb x x x 10 11 x for the IV chord. If this was extended as regular F and Bb chords to strings 1 and 4 you would have F x x 10 10 10 8 followed by Bb x x 8 10 11 10 but instead Prince puts a sus4 Eb note on the top string of the Bb IV chord and a sus2 C (or V bass note?? depends how you interpret it) on the 4th string, so the IV chord in the riff becomes - 

Bbsus4/C: x x 10 10 11 11

You can see Prince playing this chord during the first bar of the two-riff at 0:15 in the video below. By the time he's reached the second bar, he's got bored of that chord so he varies his caged positions and voices the same chord as Bbsus4/C x 15 15 15 16 x for the second bar!

bigjon

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