Adjusting Guitar Chords for Skill Level - advice from Wayne O.

It is (virtually) never wrong to play a plain major or minor chord instead of a fancier one with a more complicated name, like sus or 7 or 9.  In this case, just play C and don’t worry about the Csus chords.  It sounds perfectly fine, and only differs by leaving out an extra “doodle doodle” against the chord.  

 

Sus chords usually happen in places they’re really easy play for that particular chord—typically a D or an A.  It won’t work that well on a C anyway, but one of us could add the “doodle doodle” on a single string to get the effect, while others play a regular C chord.

 

Secondary bit of advice, if you’re curious.  Exceptions to the usual advice are dim (diminished) and aug (augmented) chords, which are strange but cool transitional chords.  For those, playing the regular major or minor chord with that name won’t sound right at all. But the solution is even easier: pretend they aren’t there and keep playing the last chord. (But if there are several different dim chords in a row, just stop playing till they’re done!)