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On 27/01/15 11:48 AM, Tim McNamara
wrote:
The main problem for me with “x7sus4” as a chord
name is its length; when there are four chord names in a bar,
every character counts in terms of legibility. Things can get
crowded fast. (This came up in preparing a chart for the
Vince Guaraldi song “Cast Your Fate To The Wind” in which all
the chords in the soloing section are suspended dominants.
Lots and lots of them, actually sounds pretty terrible on
guitar; works somewhat better on piano which was Guaraldi’s
instrument, but IMHO seriously overdone on this song).
Ah, this puts a slightly different spin on things. In a jazz piece
like this, the idea of suspension is often interpreted a little
differently - as Mark Levine explains it in the Jazz Piano Book, the
notation "x7sus" refers to playing a major triad one tone lower than
the root over the given root, e.g. G7sus would be an F triad over a
G bass. The resulting chord contains the 7th, 4th and 9th. (Whether
the 5th and 3rd are included is determined by the performer.)
So in this particular context, x7sus better reflects the composer's
intentions than x7sus4.
Brett
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