Learn the Dsus4 Guitar Chord

String Systems / Chords & Rhythm Guitar

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What's a Dsus4 chord?

    Sometimes you may come across the Dsus guitar chord symbol. That's just a simplification for Dsus4. Both refer to the same chord. However, I recommend using Dsus4, because Dsus may be confused with other types of suspended chords.


    "Sus" means that one of the main chord tones is replaced by a note next to it. In classical music, these "wrong" notes were called suspensions and were just temporary.


    The Dsus4 chord for example would usually move to a D or a Dm chord (which still sounds great). But in modern music, we may prefer a bit of dissonance. This means that we can also use suspensions without resolving them to regular chord tones 💪😎🎸.


    Regular major and minor chords (also called triads) are made of 3 notes that correspond to degrees 1, 3, and 5:

D and Dm Chord Degrees

    For a Dsus4 chord we replace the 3rd degree with the 4th degree (which is normally not a chord tone, but a scale tone):

Dsus4 Chord Degrees

    Note: Chord tones in music theory are supposed to be spelled using odd numbers (that's why for example D2 is actually a wrong spelling for Dadd9). But the sus4 is an exception because historically the 4th degree was used a temporary scale tone.


How to play a Dsus4 on the Guitar

    You can play the Dsus4 guitar chord in a few different ways. But the easiest one is this voicing here:

Dsus4 Guitar Chord - Open Position

Dsus4 moveable chord form

    The Dsus4 chord voicing in the above diagram uses the open D string, so it cannot be transposed to other keys. Here's a barre chord version that can be moved everywhere. This one is a bit tricky (like most barre chords 😀).

Dsus2 Guitar Chord - Moveable Barre

    To move chords effectively around the fretboard, you need to learn the notes really well. I highly recommend that you get Fretboard Memorization Toolbox. This free mini-course includes fun drills and musical challenges that will help you master the fretboard very quickly 👍.


Tip 1 - Mix with Major or Minor

    A cool way to use the Dsus4 chord is to mix it with the regular D or Dm chords (similar to how they did it in classical music). Moving between the 4th and the 3rd degree creates an interesting musical effect.


    In most cases the 4th degree doesn't interfere with anything, so you can use the Dsus4 to embellish a D or a Dm in a song. Here are a couple of examples:

Tip 2 - Smooth Chord Progressions

    The suspended 4th in a Dsus4 chord (the note G) happens to be an important chord tone for other chords in the same song. This means that you can inject the Dsus4 between one of these chords and a D (or Dm) to create a smoother chord progression. Here's an example going from a G to a Dsus4, and then ending on a D:

G to Dsus4 to D Chord Progression

Tip 3 - Common Tone Progressions

    This is similar to what we did in the previous part, but this time we don't resolve the Dsus4 to a D. Instead we move between chords that share that sus4 note (a G on string 1).

G to Dsus4 to Cadd9 Chord Progression

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