How to Play Suspended Chords on a Twelve String Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m John Armstrong with expertvillage.com. I’m a professional guitar instructor and today we’ll be going over the 12 string guitar. Okay, another thing that’s really cool to do on a 12 string that sounds real nice is the use of suspended chords. Now suspended chord occur when instead of having our root third and fifth notes of the triad, we substitute the third with either a second or a fourth. For example, if I was to do the suspended second based around the A chord, I’m going to substitute my C sharp, my third, for a B note, which is a second. Creates a sound like this. Here was the A major, here was the A suspended second. That could also work with an A minor chord. For example, by replacing the C or the flatted third with the B of the second. So the suspended second chord can work in conjunction with both your major chords as well as your minor chord. The next type of suspended chord will be the suspended fourth. This occurs when we replace the third or the flatted third with the fourth note of the major scale instead. So here’s an A major chord. Here’s an A suspended fourth. Well we’ll be replacing the C sharp note with a D note. Okay, same thing here’s A minor replacing the C or flatted third with the D or a fourth. So here it is with A major. Here it is with A minor. "