Suspensions are a great way to get more out of any chords you know. This page hosts the lesson material for two Musicarta piano solos which feature suspensions and 'accented non-chord tones' extensively.

The suspension riffs on these pages are 'generic' and demonstrate an aspect of music theory which is available to anyone. Any resemblance to any recorded music is entirely accidental.

Make sure you work through the pages in order. This is Page Five of the series - start with Page One.

Musicarta's home-study courses usually have a suspensions module where the suspensions-release technique is applied to the course chord sequence.

Here are 'accented non-chord tones' incorporated into the Pachelbel Canon in D chord sequence as taught in the Musicarta Canon Project, in a piece called 'Evening Song'.

  Musical 'form'

Like 'Longing', 'Evening Song' is in AABA form.

To refresh your memory, ‘AABA’ simply means:

• The piece is in four parts.
• The first, second and last parts are the same (or very similar), and
• The third part (‘the B strain’) is significantly different.

Notice that the parts of an AABA-form song are often called ‘strains’ – ‘the A strain’, ‘the B strain’, etc., particularly in jazz.

The Pachelbel Canon is not originally an 'AABA' composition, but a contrasting 'B strain' is introduced by Musicarta for the sake of a more structured performance.

  Prepared and unprepared suspensions

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