Suspended chord?

[hublocker]

A guitarist I'm going to be playing with has sent me some chord charts and they include an A7 suspended 4 chord and an A suspended.

What do I play there? Stick to the root or play a colour note?

What would be the colour notes in those chords?

[Bassist4Life]

Keep it simple. You never have to apologize for playing the root.

What style of music are we talking about? What is the tempo? Is the music busy or sparse during that chord? I'm just curious.

Joe

[maxgrant]

Originally Posted by hublocker

A guitarist I'm going to be playing with has sent me some chord charts and they include an A7 suspended 4 chord and an A suspended.

What do I play there? Stick to the root or play a colour note?

What would be the colour notes in those chords?

Depends on what's going on after the sus chord is over. If it's back to a regular 3rd chord, you can get some mileage out of your line by hitting the 4th (or 2nd, depending on what kind of sus they're doing) then following it back down (or up) to the 3rd. If not, you have other options which of course include just staying on the root and letting the rest of the instruments articulate that 4th or 2nd.

[hublocker]

It is country rock. Both songs are in A.

One song has the A suspended in an into leading into A major and the other is in a verse going from G to A7 suspended4 to A7 to G

[Co.]

You can see an A7sus4 chard as a Gmaj with A in the Bass. So your guitarist might keep on playing the same voicing on both chords, so you better play that A. Especially in Country Rock.
On sus chords you should always emphasize the root, because only if you do, the character of the chord becomes clear. On other changes you often have much more libertys.

[pete honeyman]

I'm a bit confused (not for the first time) If I see a chord named Asus I assume it's a sus4 chord. So what notes would make up something just called Asus?

[Menacewarf]

Originally Posted by pete honeyman

I'm a bit confused (not for the first time) If I see a chord named Asus I assume it's a sus4 chord. So what notes would make up something just called Asus?

A,D,E

[pete honeyman]

A, D, E - that's what I would have thought, if that's Asus, what's Asus4 - the same, surely?

[PunkerTrav]

A sus4 replaces the 3rd with the perfect 4th, hence the D. Usually, if it is written as _sus alone, I assume sus4. The alternative being _sus2 where the 3rd is replaced by the 2nd.