Asus4 Guitar Chord Lesson

This lesson will teach you how to play the Asus4 Guitar Chord ( Also known as A Suspended 4th).   There are four variations of this chord pictured in the chord charts further down the page.  This is an intermediate to advanced lesson as the chords below are rather challenging.  They require advanced techniques like barre chords and string muting, so don’t give up if you aren’t able to catch on right away.

It might be helpful if you first learned a bit of theory behind how this particular chord is constructed.  This chord is made up of three notes: A, D and E.  These notes are pulled from the A Major Scale: A B C# D E F# G# A.  So how did we arrive at those particular notes you ask?  Well, we use a formula.  That formula is: 1, 4, 5.  This means that we take the 1st, 4th and 5th steps from the A Major Scale, giving us our A, D and E.

Suspended 4th chords are very pretty sounding chords.  The notes of a Sus4 chord are almost the same as a Major Chord except for one note.  Hence the name “Suspended 4th”.  We are “Suspending”or replacing the 3rd with a 4th, in other words, we are replacing the “C#”  of the A Major with a “D” in this particular case.

Here is a helpful key that will assist you in reading the chord diagrams below:

Everything on the above chart should be self explanatory, except for the last three in the third column. They may need a bit of explaining. The O, or open symbol, simply means that you do not press down on any notes on that string. The X means you do not strum that particular string. The Barre symbol means you need to barre that particular fret. When you barre a fret you are pressing down on multiple strings at the same time with one finger.

A Suspended 4th Video Lesson

Chord Playing Tip: Be sure that you are pressing down on the string hard enough. You should play each string one at a time to make sure you have a nice clean sound. If any of the strings buzz or sound muted, then something is not right.