Explaining suspensions

with Bob Dylan, Roberta Flack and Louis Armstrong

In a previous post, I listed examples of melodic suspensions. But I didn't do a very good job of explaining how they work. So I will rectify that here.

Suspensions are a temporary misalignment of chords and melody. I will explain this idea more completely below, but first listen to this little tune I wrote that gives examples of various kinds of suspensions.

That last one is technically a "retardation", but I would rather call it a suspension because a) it acts exactly like one, so why have a whole separate term for it, and b) that term has not aged well and we should retire it.