Notating a sus chord with thirteenth

Question

How do you notate a chord like G F A C E without using slash notation? G13sus? G13sus4?

If it’s along the lines of a G13, this leads to me to wonder why the chord G F A C is usually notated as G9sus4 and not G11sus or G11sus4. After all, the only difference between that and the G11 is the omitted third.

Answer 1

How do you notate a chord like G F A C E without using slash notation? G13sus? G13sus4?

Either would work. "sus" is typically interpreted as sus4.

Someone could interpret it as sus2. Someone else could add the fifth: D. But that's the fun with interpreting the chord symbols.

G11sus or G11sus4

These two symbols don't make sense to me. "11" means: add 11 (and b7, and perhaps even 9), while "sus4" means: replace 3 with 4 – that's contradictory.

After all, the only difference between that [G13sus4] and the G11 is the omitted third.

But that's a huge difference! So large, that – as Richard points out – many musicians wouldn't even consider to play a chord with both major third and 11 and play sus4 if they see 11 symbol. I'd like to add that some other musicians see sus4 as a coexistence of third and fourth. But it's a clearly very distinct sound.

In a major and dominant chords the perfect fourth is often called an avoid note, i.e. a note that even if it's present in the scale, shouldn't be emphasized. Playing a note as a part of the chord does emphasize it.

Why would you notate it without slash notation? F△/G seems very much the clearest way of expressing it.

I agree it's a very clear way to notate the chord, I would argue, even more clear than G13sus4:

• it strongly suggests to play notes G F A C E
• it strongly suggests to play G in the bass (which is not suggested by G13sus4)

The only issue that I may have with F△/G is that it suggests that the root of the chord is F, which means it's a fourth inversion of a ninth chord... which doesn't really exist, see e.g.: How do you write a dominant ninth in fourth inversion? What I mean by this is that in most cases we wouldn't hear this chord as rooted in F.

So the symbol F△/G isn't so helpful in understanding the harmony. But for writing a readable score for the performers it seems fine to me.

Answer 2

I would argue that calling it G13 is sufficient, and that it's not necessary to specify the sus aspect of this chord.

This is because eleventh and thirteenth chords often automatically omit the chordal (major) third so that it doesn't clash with the eleventh. This is one reason why ♯11 chords are so much more common than "regular" 11 chords: the ♯11 creates a whole step (or major ninth) with the third, as opposed to the half step created between the third and eleventh.

To quote a great comment by Max to Dom's terrific answer here:

it's puristic to insist that G11 contains both a B and a C. In older pop charts G11 is a common shorthand for G7sus4 or G9sus4, as becomes clear from looking at the voicings in the piano part. If you want an accompanist to play both the B and C, G11 alone probably isn't enough to override the instinct against playing that chord. I have seen G7add11 used in this (uncommon) situation, and there was a suggested voicing written in as well. (And the suggested voicing was stacked fourths, so it actually put the 11th below the 3rd.)

Following this same logic, I would simply call your G F A C E a G13 chord. You could specify the omissions of the third and fifth if you really want, but in my experience that would be unnecessary and may honestly just trip up a sight reader.