Since the 3rd is present, neither of those are sus chords. The chord names like “Csus4 sus2 add3” are just cumbersome.
The second would clearly be better named as “Cadd2” as you comment. That one seems easy. I agree with you that first would be more sensible to a player as “C add2 add4”, but that is still long and cumbersome. The chord itself is naturally a little hard to describe, as the voicing is more of a Bill Evans-ish cluster than a chord per se. Considering 5-6 different options, most of them resulted in different rather than fewer confusions. I came down to "C add2&4" as fairly compact and perhaps taking the least amount of puzzling out. Hopefully that’s helpful. > On Mar 5, 2026, at 12:50 AM, Werner LEMBERG <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Folks, > > > I seek advice from Jazz music theory experts. Consider the following > input and the attached image. > > ``` > music = { > <c d e f g> > <c d e g> > } > > << > \new ChordNames \music > \new Staff \transpose c c' \music >>> > ``` > > The output looks strange to me. Shouldn't this be rather the > following? > > Csus4 sus2 add3 → Cadd2 add4 > Csus2 add3 → Cadd2 > > Even from a musicological point of view the current LilyPond rendering > seems to be wrong, because these two chords don't have 'suspended' > notes at all – the 'target' notes the suspensions should lead to are > already present. > > > Werner > <ignatzek-problems.png>
