Guitar Tips for Newbies: Open D Chord

The open D chord can actually be a lot of fun. For the purposes of this lesson, I'm assuming that by now you at least know some of the basic open chord formations... so this lesson is going to expand ever so slightly upon that knowledge. We're only talking about the open D chord, but this handy little guitar tip can be thrown into literally just about any song you'll ever come across that has a open D chord in it! I use Dsus all over the place. Technically the sus I show you here is a sus4. Quick Theory Lesson: Wherever you see (sus) it is short for suspended - it means you're raising the the second note in the chord (in this case F#) a semitone to G, which is the fourth of D. F# is the third note in the scale... normally you need a root note (D), plus a third (F#) and a fifth (A) to build a chord. Suspending changes the third to a fourth. Confused? I hope not. But you can learn some guitar theory here. Back to the lesson... These simple little tricks you can play on the E string, while playing an open D chord, can really add dynamics to whatever song you're playing. Incidentally, you can apply a similar technique to many other guitar chords to modify them just enough to create a different sound that still works well in the song. But we'll save that for another day. Enjoy...

Video Problems? Watch Open D Chord Tricks on Youtube