E 6sus2 — Dobro

E 6sus2 spells E – F# – B – C#. In a jam nobody says that out loud — they call a key and a number, and this chord is the vi of G, the V of A, the IV of B and the ii of D. Learning it that way is what lets you play a tune you have never heard.

The dobro chair owns the answering voice. Face-up in open G, a chord here is not a shape to grab but a fret to lay the bar across, or a short slant of it, and the slide into that fret is half the sound — which is why the seat waits for a hole in the vocal rather than filling every bar.

Every position below is the bar on the GBDGBD strings — straight across a fret, or tilted into a short slant — with the open strings first and the bar moving up the neck after them, and a quality open G cannot spell that way is marked rather than drawn as a grip no steel can hold.