Sus Chords Explained Please

Chords, scales, harmony, melody, etc.
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Could someone please give me a run down of sus chords? For some reason I just cant get a grasp on why they are there or what they are used for.

I understand every other chord and how to build it. But my research is completely lacking when it comes to sus chords. I dont know anything about them and cant find anything about them.

Can someone give me a rundown of common sus chords, why the tonic is sometimes the 2nd degree even though the chord is named after the first degree, etc..

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"the tonic is sometimes the 2nd degree even though the chord is named after the first degree" - no. A key has the one tonic, '1'.
A chord's root if the second degree means a 'ii chord', period.
One could encounter say a seventh chord, and that seventh appears in the bass, it's a ii chord in third inversion, so the scale's first note occurs in the bass of the chord.
The root is absolute. IE: C D F A in C is still the ii chord (Dm7 with C bass).

What eg., a 'sus 4 chord' does is lose the third in favor of the fourth. "Sus 4" comes out of actual suspension where that tone from the previous harmony is held over as the nominative chord changes. Probably when you see "Sus 2", we've lost the third in favor of the second. C D G for instance. The difference between that and a Sus 4 chord on D [in 2nd inversion] is intent and context.

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Personally, I generally use sus4 chords (and the extended versions like 7sus4, 9sus4, 13sus4) as an alternative to dominant 7th chords (7, 9, 13)... They are simply built by taking the major chord and replacing the major 3rd by a perfect 4th. In a classical music song in C major, you'd typically see it in progressions such as F Gsus4 G C - the suspended 4th resolves downwards to a 3rd (hence the name).

In jazz songs, the suspended 4th is often not resolved. The chord often has a 7th and a 9th and is typically written as something like F/G or Dm7/G, but it's IMHO essentially the same chord. In particular, it works well in songs with a sort of mixolydian mode feeling - for instance, in C mixolydian, you want to use C D E F G A Bb. Using a regular G chord as a cadence makes you use B (and thus breaks the feel), and using Gm has a sort weak resolution. Using F/G instead is a good solution, it has a strong resolution and doesn't use B.

These chords can be used in other contexts... Sus chords have a very neutral feel that is appropriate for some songs. They can also be used as replacements for other chords than dominant 7ths (replacing Cm with Csus4 or the Csus4 Cm sequence usually works for instance). They can be used in various arpeggiated patterns (like Csus4 Cm Csus2 Cm Csus2 Cm etc...). There's also the sus2 chord (and the very, very rare version with a 7th - C7sus2) which has a "neutral" feeling like the sus4 but isn't quite the same (although they are simply an inversion - Csus2 can be rewritten as Gsus4/C for instance).

I've also seen sus b9 chords in Jazz theory books (for instance Csus4 b9) and once or twice in real books (written as something like Gm7b5/C), which have a similar harmonic role but a much more dissonant sound (the b9 suggests phrygian mode).

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Sus (suspended) harmonies want to resolve. In a Sus 4 harmony, the 4th resolves to the 3rd of the chord. A sus 9 ( or add 9) chord, wants to resolve to the root of the chord. Tension, release. The most common place for a suspended chord to occur, is when a V chord "turns back" to the I chord, and resolves.
Steve Wisnoski

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That's quite conservative of you, while reiterating something already explained.

There is quite a lot of usage since, oh, say Debussy, in the last century and a half where people freely make sonorities that do not have to obey conventional notions such as that. I feel sure the OP has encountered 'sus chords' somewhere in more contemporary usage than you encountered in Theory 101.

Here is a preponderance of 'sus 2' or what the composer liked to call the "2 chord", 'theory' being: instead of root/third/fifth, instead of third here is a major second. Another way to look at this sonority is perfect fifths stacked eg., C G D and the D is put next to the C, voicing the chord. It gives an 'open' kind of sonority and an ambiguity different than 'major vs minor' quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxOWSxUSiU4

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