Dumb question (sus/dim)

[workrelease]

Dear BaM chord gurus...what the heck does 'sus' and 'dim' mean??

Thanks y'all.

BTW - I saw a really funny t-shirt which showed a Gsus chord and said
Gsus Saves!

[Peter]

dim means diminished: a triad made of two minor thirds (for example C Eb Gb). Often on a chart it's shorthand for diminished 7, (C - Eb - Gb - Bbb: aka "A"). Diminished chords are unsettled and mysterious sounding. Play a lot of them in a row and you have a showdown in an old west saloon. They are also subsitutes for dominant (V) chords.
Sus means suspended. If it's alone it means a sus 4 chord, in which the third of the chord is raised to be a fourth (e.g. C - F - G). It's called a suspension because the suspended note wants to resolve down. A Csus4 would usually resolve to a C major or minor, depending on the key.
There is also a sus2 chord, which would be a plain old major or minor chord with a 2nd in there, such as C - D - E - G. As with the sus4, the sus2 wants to resolve down, so the example chord would resolve to C - E -G.
You also tend to see lots of sus chords when there are chord progressions with open strings.

Hope that helps!

[workrelease]

Thanks a lot Peter!!

[Jo]

Nicely put Peter. Even I understood it clearly! :dude:

[redmax61]

Yup, same here, and I'm not that smart when it comes to music theory. I do know that back in the day Alex Lifeson used a lot of suspended chords to kind of liven things up.

[Dancing Frog]

Just an additional note. The majestic sounding sus2 went though a period of time where it was popularly known in musical notation as the add9 or /9 chord although technically they are not the same. The add9 is 1-3-5-9 with sus2 being 1-2-3-5. The 2 and 9 are just same note an octave apart. Also, by the same logic, one could say that the sus4 is an add11 and the 6 is an add13, but those names have never caught on.

[matrisequencer]

Great thread, thanks ! Even understandable for non-natives.