 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, I'm going to tackle a very important theory discussion which a lot of students have asked me over the my time of teaching music. The difference between suspended chords, ad chords and extensions as we call them, chord extensions or chord colors. Now all of these three are similar in what they do but are different in what they sound and can be used in very very different ways. So I'd like to talk about how you form them in this lesson primarily and then how we can use them a little bit here and there as much as we can. And I'm going to try and do it as organically as possible. There's not going to be a defined set of music which I want you to play in the lesson as I normally do. It's more organic. I'll tell you the theory behind the chord and then I will tell you how you can use it and jam along and improvise a little bit. Okay, so before we get cracking, it'll be good if you get your keyboards out, a pen, a paper, notebook, whatever you feel and don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Give us a like, hit that bell for regular notifications and let's get moving. So first off, let's look at the difference between all these three chords theoretically of course. So if you take a triad, let's start with a triad. So if you take maybe a major chord, let me look at A major, A C sharpie, okay. And let's take another triad also for our study, A minor, A minor, okay, major, minor. So what a suspension will do is it will remove the third in a major chord, it'll be a major third in a minor chord, it'll be a minor third. So it'll remove that third and then suspend it as we say with either the perfect fourth, we call this resultant chord as the sus four or the suspended four. So what happened here? This is A major, then we remove the third and we get A sus four sound. Come back to the third major, that's your suspended chord. As the word suspended means, it kind of makes the chord a bit uncertain, it's neither, it's not resolved, like a major chord is very stable, a minor chord, even though it's sad, it's still stable. But a suspended chord, it's like hanging in the balance, where should I go next, right? So that's your sus four root, suspended four or perfect four and the perfect fifth, okay. Now coming to the suspended two, what happens with the sus two is we again replace the third and then bring it down to the major second, okay, suspended two, so sus two is nothing but a major second. You can calculate a major second either by going two steps above your root or two steps below the major third or one step below the minor third, there we go. So again, let's recap major chord, minor chord, suspended four, suspended two. There's no minor sus two or major sus four like that, it's just called sus four sus two. So it can be used to suspend the role or the function of either the major or the minor chord. So for example, if I go, I can do major going to sus coming back to major or I can do minor sus minor, I can even play around with the suspended four, the suspended two and the triad either major or minor and get a nice vibe, build something melodically, stuff like that. If I take minor with suspended chords, you could kind of pivot the A minor sus two sus four and explore different bass notes in your left hand and that complements these chords really well. You see it's not just an A suspended chord or A minor or whatever, it's that with a different bass note. It doesn't have to only be A. So that's what I like about suspended chords. They allow you to explore the bass. They allow you to make your triad more interesting and they allow you to explore your bass a lot more. Okay guys, so that's sus two sus four. Before I move to add chords, there's just a couple more suspended things which you could try out. There's sus two four. I don't know the official word for it. I just call it sus two plus four or sus two four or two four could also work. So how do we build that root fifth, remove the fifth, keep the sus two, keep the sus four. I quite like this vibe as well. You could add a fusion, could even add a fifth for flavor and you can add a minor seventh as well to the equation. When I spend it on a scale, come to think of it, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. A fusion sound, the flat seven. There's another chord called the seven sus four which is again very ambient chord. So sus two four with the fifth if you wish. Bring it in with a seven flat giving you a more pentatonic scale to deal with five note scale. Then what do we have? We can have a seven sus four that could resolve to a dominant chord which could resolve back to a tonic chord which is the one. So this could be the five of the one. So we've covered sus two, sus four, the other flavors, the ambient one sus two, sus four. Then we've looked at the seven sus four. We've looked at the theory, the formation, hope that was useful. Now we need to move further. The lesson is not over. So now let's talk about add chords and add chord will basically add to the triad. So if you take the major triad, in this case A major, you're adding elements to the triad. So to my knowledge, you can add the two very ambient flavor. So you're adding the major two to the major chord. We call this as an A add two, you're adding the two to the triad. Now you could also add a four. We don't call this a sus four because you're not removing the three. You're keeping the three and the four and adding the four. We call this A add four. Now some of these, if you take an add two, it just sounds good when you play it as a block with the third. It kind of sounds nice, but when you do an add four, even that sounds nice, but a lot of these also sound good arpeggiated. For example, two arpeggio with the three. So that's a four note chord. So an add chord ends up being a four note chord. Now let's play the triad with the add. Play around. Let's try some stuff with the add four. Sometimes with the add four, you tend to leave the scale a bit, but that's cool. Now with an add, what you could also consider is an add, but not a normal four. You can do an add with a sharp four. So you could start with that sound and then build around that sound. So keep that lingering on, you know, or you could do add twos and add fours in the same song. You know, you can combine them depending on the flavor, like for example, amazing grace. That's a add to how sweet the sound. All add twos, going with an add four there, add four. You do this a lot with country or with ballad kind of playing. So any song which you have cards already printed for, you could just decide every chord in that list or in that progression. Do you like the sound of the add two or do you like the sound of the add four? Now sometimes they call add two as an add nine. That's also fine because we count that nine sometimes like that. You could say this could also be like a C add nine, but a nine is nothing but a two. So it's easy to know that, okay, what is the two from C? The answer is D. So, okay, so usually when I'm thinking of add twos or add fours, I'm adding them with a triad. Now you could also add a six. That's another really cool vibe. So if you take like a major, you can add a six. That's also called a major sixth, by the way. What I really like is when you add a minor sixth or you could call it also an augmented fifth. I really like that mysterious vibe. So you're doing major with a flat six or a sharp five. Now you could even do that with a minor. There we go. Right now we are writing all about those aliens. There we go. So that's your flat six. And if you take a minor chord, you can then do that with a major sixth. You could call that as a minor with an add six or minor sixth. So we say minor sixth, major sixth. That's an augmented fifth or a major chord with an added. You can call it whatever you want really. Just think about it as triad with a sixth, either the major sixth or a minor sixth. Or you can say triad with a two or with a four. And in some rare cases, you could even have a triad with a sharp four, which makes it very Lydian as we say. Okay. You can even have a triad with a flat two, very Phrygian sound as we say. Okay, guys. So the difference between a suspension and an add chord, a suspension will remove the third from the equation and substitute it or suspend it with the major two or the perfect four, sus two sus four, while an addition adds to the triad. So if you have a song with triads, you're just adding to them. If you're suspending it, you remove the three. So the ad would end up being, I guess, a more sophisticated sound. You can use it as it is and not, it'll just sound very, very big and yeah, very, very intense while a suspended sound is something which you want to play around. You want to do the suspension and then resolve it back to somewhere else or resolve it to somewhere else or just change it to some other chord altogether. So both exciting flavors. And the last kind of chord I wanted to share with you all today is extension. So with an extension, you use words like nines, levens and thirteens. So a nine is nothing but a two played up the octave. Now that doesn't make a lot of sense until you understand why you're considering it up the octave. That's when there is some kind of a seventh. So when you're calling a chord a ninth or major ninth or minor 11th or something 13 or some sharp 11 and whatnot, it's because there needs to be a seven which could also be felt or which is there in the sound in the chord. So if I explain this, let me explain it on A. So this is A major. So this is A major with a major seventh, we call this A major seventh. Now if you want to add a two, like a B, now you will call it a ninth. If you want to add a D with the G sharp, it'll be a 11th or a sharp 11 where my four, which is the 11th. So nine is the two, 11 is the four, 13 is the six. So if I recap that again, let's do that with a dominant seventh chord A, C sharp, G, the nine will be B. How we voice it is another topic altogether, we'll cover that and we have covered that in a lot of videos, but we will shortly. That's a ninth chord and that's a 11th chord. What is my D with respect to A, the fourth or the 11th? Why are we calling it 9, 11, 13? Because there is a seven involved in the chord. So when do we call it an extension using words like 9, 11, 13, these jazz extensions as they call them when there is a chord, a triad major or minor with a seventh, that could be either a major seventh or a minor seventh. So you're extending it with beyond the octave. That's why you use numbers like 9, 11, 13. Otherwise you could have said 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. You could close, you have closed the puzzle within the octave, but you're having a dominant seventh or a major seventh already as the sound and you're building it with a nine, with a 11, in this case, 11 sharp and a 13. Or take a dominant seventh chord, get a nine there, get a 11 there and a 13 there or take a minor seventh sound, add a nine, add a 11 and a 13. Now these extensions need to be voiced well and there are simple ways of voicing them. You can use triads, for example, you can take A and do a G major in your right hand and A major in your left hand and you get a very sophisticated extended harmony sound. So you're getting the 9, the 11 and the flat seven by taking a triad like G major and playing it with a different bass A. So that'll be like an A11 sound. I use this a lot and that resolves to its root. Right guys, so we've covered three theoretical topics in this lesson. We started with suspensions, where you do the suspension and then you resolve it to the respective major or the minor chord and you use them in tandem. Then you have the add chords, additions where you have add two, which adds to the triad. You're adding that one note, which is the two, which is the four, add four, you could add it to even to a minor, can add it to a sus four or an add four with a minor chord. You can add the sixth major sixth, minor sixth. Then you can do an add six with respect to a major triad and an add flat six rather with respect to the minor chord. So it's add chords, our triads plus these add notes, which are twos, the fours and the sixes. Lastly, we looked at extensions. Extensions need the seventh interval from the root. So you need either the major seventh or the minor seventh. And then you build extensions, which are 9s, 11s, 13s. Why 9, 11, 13? Because those are not part of the chord. They are not part of the 1, 3, 5, 7. So what remaining numbers are there after 1, 3, 5, 7, 2, 4, 6. What do we call them instead 9, 11, 13, because they are away from the octave. So those are the three types of chords, which I've covered today. Cards, suspensions and extensions, as we call them. Right guys, hope you found the lesson useful. If you have any questions or any doubts, you can always leave them in the comments. I'll be sure to answer them as soon as I can. If you feel your level as a musician is a little bit more basic or you'd like to sort of go through this theory in a more structured way, you could either consider our virtual courses at Nathaniel School or you could go to our website, NathanielSchool.com and you will have access to a more structured, regular curriculum which is sort of ever-growing. We keep updating the lessons and that will be a step-by-step kind of a process. There are foundational topics, there are intermediate topics and there are advanced topics as well. Right, hope you can make some great music. Keep rocking. Cheers.