Suspended second and fourth shapessus2sus4

It sounds ringing and deliberately ambiguous. Read another way it is a stack of fourths, which is why it works as a pad rather than as a chord that resolves.

4 moveable shapes, 1 of them drop 2. None has an open string in it, so each one plays every root there is; the dots are degrees, and R is the root.

One shape, twelve chords

Pick a root and every diagram below moves to it. Nothing about any of the grips changes — only the fret they start on, and each one starts somewhere different because they are rooted on different strings.

Showing Csus2sus4. Every voicing of it, open strings included, is on its own chord page.

Root on the low E string

The lowest root available, so these are the fullest-sounding shapes and the ones that carry a band. F at the first fret, G at the third, A at the fifth: the shape is the same and the fret is the whole of the difference.

8frR4R459

8-8-10-10-8-10

6 notes · 3 frets

5frR459

8857xx

4 notes · 4 frets

Root on the A string

The other half of the pair. Almost every progression is played by alternating these with the low E shapes, because a root a fourth up the neck is a root two frets along the string below — the hand barely moves.

3frR4R95

x33533

5 notes · 3 frets

Drop 2

Close position — R–3–5–7 and its rotations — puts four notes inside an octave, which will not fit under a hand on adjacent strings. Drop the second voice from the top down an octave and it does. That is the whole operation, and it is why these exist: four notes, four adjacent strings, no gap to reach over, and the grip slides.

The base voicing only, one per string set. The same drop applied to the chord's other close voicings gives more grips, but those are inversions of a drop 2 rather than of the chord, and that is a distinction worth more than it costs to explain.

strings 5–4–3–2
4–R–9–5

7fr4R95

x-8-10-7-8-x

4 notes · 4 frets

The other suspended shapes

Every voicing of one particular sus2sus4 chord — including the open-string ones that do not move — is on that chord's own page, linked under each shape above. All the moveable shapes for every quality are on the shapes index, and the suspended and power chords as a family are on their own page.

Midi Settings

7.5
Play Style
One pass of the pick from the lowest string up, everything left ringing.
Instrument
350
150

Style

Shows each chord the way this style would voice it, and marks which of its alternatives belong to the idiom.

Layout

Left Handed Mode