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Catching Up II...

The main reason chords are sometimes double named, duplicated or just plain confusing are because you can analyze a chord from two places. The most popular way is starting from the Chords starting tone (C major, Db minor...) meaning you would have several 'starting tones' and - And you can analyze the same chord from the 'starting tone' of the Key that you are in which would mean that there would only be one 'starting tone' or reference point.

We analyze chords and scale from the Key note which sometimes is the best way - Here we will analyze the suspended chords...

First lets start in the Key of C...

Key of C - Csus2 - C G D - - 1 2 5 - numbered from key root
Key of C - Csus4 - C G F - - 1 4 5 - numbered from key root

Now we will shuffle the same tones used above and change the Keys...

Key of F - Fsus2 - F C G - - 1 2 5 - numbered from key root
Key of G - Gsus4 - G D C - - 1 4 5 - numbered from key root

This shows that the Csus4 and the Fsus2 are the same chords, and the Gsus4 and the Csus2 are the same chords. Lets go a little bit deeper and study the pattern that was used to create the chord, Our theory of "Powered Extensions" tells that a basic extended chord with no third (a power chord is a basic non-extended chord with no third). This means that there are two more extensions that can be plugged into the suspened chord theory...

Its always best to start in the Key of C...

Key of C - Csus2 - C G D - - 1 2 5 - numbered from key root
Key of C - Csus4 - C G F - - 1 4 5 - numbered from key root
Key of C - Csus6 - C G A - - 1 5 6 - numbered from key root
Key of C - Csus7 - C G B - - 1 5 7- numbered from key root

The sus6 and sus7 are terms not commonly if ever used at all - Looking at the numbering of the sus2 and sus4 is strong evidence of how the suspened names were created, we just used the same 'process' to come up with the sus6 - sus7...

The sus1 wouldnt be used because that would be the 'starting tone' and the sus3 wouldnt be used because the whole idea is to drop the third(3) tone of the chord - The sus5 wouldnt be used because the 1 and 5 are the main structure of the chord and sus8 wouldn't be used because its an octave of the 'starting tone'.

With all that said the sus6 and sus7 are truly Unique and totally valid chords, the problem is with the naming of them - We created our own naming convention for the suspened chords that makes it easier to understand what chord you are playing, If you are reading our "Chords Database" then the conversions would be: see our Chord Building worksheet!

Csus2 = C(5)9th
Csus4 = C(5)11th
Csus6 = C(5)13th
Csus7 = C(5)7th

We have added the suspended terms to the Chords Formula