Fsus2 Guitar Chord – Everything You Need To Know About This Cool Chord

The Fsus2 chord is a little-known and cool-sounding guitar chord. Let’s learn more!

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In this free lesson you will learn…

  • What is an Fsus 2 guitar chord?
  • 3 easy ways to play an Fsus2 guitar chord
  • 4 bonus chord tips & techniques

Fsus2 Guitar Chord – What Is It?

If you are curious about the Fsus2 guitar chord, you are about to open the door to some more rich harmony in your guitar playing.

One general principle of guitar playing is that the most satisfying things sound cool and are easy to do, and in this guitar lesson we will break down the Fsus2 guitar chord for you and give you some handy options for playing it in different contexts.

To begin understanding the Fsus2 guitar chord, it’s a good idea to start with the concept that all sus2 chords are just variations of their underlying major or minor chords. The Fsus2 is a variant of the F major or F minor chord.

fsus2-guitar-chord

(If you don't understand the above image please read our article "How To Read Guitar Chordboxes In 60 Seconds". It will make everything clear!)

Here’s how it works: F and Fm, the “basic” F chords, each have three notes in them:

  • The root or note the chord is named after (in this case, F).
  • The third, which tells your ear whether the chord is major (A is the major third) or minor (Ab is the minor third).
  • The fifth, which is a stabilizer note (in this case, C) that gives context to the other two notes.

Fsus2-guitar-chord

If you play the F and the Fm, even though there is only one note (the one on the G string) that changes, you’ll hear that there is a big difference in the sound of the chords.

  • The Fsus2 takes away the changing note and adds a different note, the second (in this case, G), instead.
  • That substitution alters the personality of the F chord and makes it a little ambiguous as to whether it is major or minor. It is neither, and that’s why it’s called a suspended chord.

Here are some options for playing the Fsus2 guitar chord.

fsus2-guitar-chord

From F to The Fsus2 Guitar Chord

You don’t have to be fascinated by music theory to be able to play an Fsus2 guitar chord, but it does help to make sense of it to see how an F chord can be modified to make an Fsus2 chord.

It’s also a little bit easier to play than an F chord.

This handy side-by-side comparison chart shows you the change made in an F chord to turn it into an Fsus2.

fsus2-guitar-chord

You’re opening up the G string, turning that note into a G. It’s even easier to do than it is to explain.

Are you ever going to actually need an Fsus2 chord? Let’s ask the Boss! Here’s Springsteen, introducing “Rosalita” while strumming the Fsus2 chord during his “The River” tour.

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The Easy Fsus2 Guitar Chord

It takes all of us some time on the guitar before we’re able to do that mini-barre on the high E and B strings to get a nice clean sounding F chord.

  • There’s no reason to hold up your guitar playing because of it. Some chords just take a while to get situated in your hand.
  • If that’s where you are, you can still play an excellent version of the Fsus2 guitar chord. Just don’t worry about the high E string.

Let the high E string take care of itself. To play this chord, do the following:

  • Place your first finger on the first fret of the B string.
  • Place your third finger on the third fret of the D string.
  • Strum from the D string.

Here’s what this Fsus2 shape looks like:

fsus2-guitar-chord

As a general rule, whenever you see an F chord you can replace it for an Fsus2. This will give your music a cool, relaxing feel.

If you are looking for other alternatives to the F major chord, you can check out this useful lesson on the Fmaj7 chord: Fmaj7 Guitar Chord: 5 Ways To Play This Lovely Chord

fsus2-guitar-chord

Pro-tip: Sick of hitting those extra strings at the top of the guitar? You can mute the low E (sixth) string by sneaking your thumb a little bit over the side of the neck to touch it.

Don’t hyperflex your wrist; just get a little bit of your thumb on the string. That will mute the string and help your chords to sound clean.

Fsus2 Guitar Chord – Root On D String

One of the coolest ways to play the Fsus2 guitar chord is to play this with the root on the D string.

Here’s the chordbox:

fsus2

To play this chord, do the following:

  • Barre your 1st finger on fret 3 of the D string (4th string) to the high E string (1st string).
  • Ple your 3rd finger on fret 5 of the G string (3rd string).
  • Place your 4th finger on fret 6 of the B string (2nd string).

This Fsus2 guitar chord is one of the most popular voicings out there and is worth adding to your arsenal of chords.

This is also a ‘moveable’ chord shape.

What’s A Moveable Chord Shape?

A ‘moveable’ chord shape is exactly what it sounds like. This is a chord shape that can be moved around the fretboard.

All this means for us as guitarists is that you can take the same shape of a chord and move it to any place on the fretboard.

Try this:

  • Place your Fsus2 guitar chord with the root on the D string.
  • Now, move it up two frets.

Notice how you’ve kept the same shape, but the chord now sounds different. This is because we’ve changed the key of the guitar chord.

Woah…How Did You Do That?

It’s pretty simple really, all we did was change the root note of a chord.

  • The root note gives us the name of the chord, so if we change the root note, we change the chord.
  • For example, if we have a Fsus2 chord, we can change the root note to ANY other note. In the example above, we moved our shape up two frets to a ‘G’ note.

Now the chord that you’re playing is Gsus2 chord. Pretty clever right?

Here’s the golden rule:

  • For any moveable shape, you can change the root note of the chord to change the key of the chord.

To do this correctly, all you need to know is what the notes are on the strings, you can learn more about this here: Guitar Finger Strengthener – An Essential Guide

f-sus-2

Fsus2 Guitar Chord – Root On A String

Another kind of moveable chord shape is the Fsus2 guitar chord with the root on the A string. This is a great chord to try if you’re interested in barre chords.

When someone’s talking about barre chords, what that usually refers to is a certain subset of moveable shapes that have two components, these are:

  • Your first finger is held straight across all of the strings of the guitar, which is the “bar” part.
  • Your other fingers form an E or an A shape. This depends on whether you find the root of the chord on the E string or the A string.

So barre chords are just moveable E shapes and A shapes, with your first finger acting as a moveable capo, bringing the open strings into the chord.

Making an E-shaped sus2 chord is impractical, given the number of fingers we have, the size of our hands, and the locations of the necessary notes, but making an A-shaped sus2 chord is pretty easy.

Here is what an Fsus2 guitar chord looks like as an A-shaped barre chord.

easy-fsus2

As this chord is a ‘moveable’ shape, we can use this chord to move into any other key on the fretboard. All we have to do is find out what the notes are on the A string and voila!

We’ve got 12 other ‘sus2’ chords that we can learn. Here are the notes on the A string:

easy-fsus2-chord

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