What is the difference between A9 and Asus2?
One of the problems in music is that people often ignore (or simply don’t know) the “standard” notation. I have been guilty of this myself simply because it can be very tedious to write out “Aadd9″ all the time! There’s also another problem that is less apparent and we’ll come to that in a moment. First, let’s define the notes of the chords involved, shall we? Okay, technically, there are very big differences between A9, Aadd9 and Asus2. If you’ve read Building Additions (and Suspensions) you might already have a handle on this. Let’s start with an A major chord: A: A, C#, E Any “suspended” chord means that you are replacing the third of the chord (in this case the C#) with something else, normally the 2 or 4. So an Asus2 is this: Asus2: A, B, E An Aadd9 is adding the ninth (in this case the B) in addition to the rest of the A major chord. To me, there is no difference between a “2″ chord and an “add9.” So the Aadd9 is as follows: Aadd9: A, C#, E, B And finally, any “9″ chord should, t
