They quickly became one of my favourite bands when I first heard them a few years ago. What I admire the most about Twenty One Pilots is the overall artistry beyond the music. They create worlds just to sing about them, and that’s freaking cool to me! Let’s learn to play Holding on to You, Fake You Out and Lane Boy on the ukulele.
What Are We Learning To Play?
The tabs are from a fun little video I made for my TikTok account recently. It’s pretty much showcasing the various levels of playing difficulty for Twenty One Pilots riffs. It starts easy and ends on a super challenging riff. Scroll down to give some of them a shot.
Ukulele Tabs
Easy - Holding on to You
The main riff we are learning here is the synth line that runs behind the vocal melody in the chorus. We can make it easier on ourselves by barring the 9th fret on the bottom two strings. That’s going to leave our ring finger free to hit that 11th fret. Then use your middle finger on the 10th fret on the string above.
A|-9------------|------9--------|
E|---9-11-6-4-1-|-11-9---11-9-7-|
A|--------------|---------------|
G|--------------|---------------|
Medium - Fake You Out
For this riff you WILL need a low G. We are playing the synth line that opens up the song and then runs throughout the entire thing. We are going to be doing ALOT of barring here too, my 3 tips on how to improve might be useful if you are wanting to get better at it.
Use your first finger to barre the 6th fret on the middle two strings. Any time you see a blue note on the tab, that means you need to be barring that note too. After you have played the first 5 notes, move your barre up to the 9th fret. We are repeating this process for each measure.
You don’t have to barre if you are struggling, i think it’s much easier to play it this way.
A|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|-----------------------| E|---6---6------------|---6---6------------|---6---6------------|---6---6---------------| C|-6---6---6----------|-3---3---3----------|--------------------|-----------------------| G|--------------------|--------------------|-4---4---4----------|-6---6---6-------------|
A|------------------9-|------------------9-|------------------9-|------------------9----| E|-------------9-11---|-------------9-11---|-------------9-11---|-------------9-11---11-| C|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|-----------------------| G|--------------------|--------------------|--------------------|-----------------------|
Hard - Lane Boy
I have put this in the “hard” section as its one of those riffs that looks super tricky to play, but it’s actually not.
What’s great about this song is that it only requires one fretting finger to play the entire thing. We will be using our first finger to barre the bottom three strings. The tricky part comes with the strumming hand. You need to assign one finger per string. Use your thumb on the C string, your first finger on the E and your middle finger on the A. This won’t ever change so bear that in mind while learning this song.
A|---------5----------------12-----------------12-----------------12----|
E|-------5---------------12-----------------12-----------------12-------|
C|-2-5-5-----5----7-9-12-------12----7-9-12-------12----7-9-12-------12-|
G|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
