Twenty One Pilots - Heathens - Guitar Cover

About Heathens

"Heathens" pulls you in with a brooding, minimalist guitar texture that sits perfectly in the pocket at 95 BPM. Playing it in B minor in E Standard tuning keeps everything accessible, but the challenge is nailing the restrained, atmospheric feel rather than overplaying. The guitar work here is largely about tone and space: letting notes breathe, keeping picking dynamics understated, and resisting the urge to add weight that the song deliberately avoids. Twenty One Pilots build tension through subtraction, which is a genuinely useful lesson for any guitarist learning to serve a song. The Alternative Rock genre is full of tracks that reward this kind of controlled playing, and "Heathens" is a good entry point for practising it. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop the main riff slowed down until your picking hand stays relaxed and even throughout, because the moment you tense up, the mood falls apart.

• The song sits at 95 BPM in E Standard tuning, making the moderate tempo a good test of consistent, relaxed picking dynamics.
• Playing in B minor, the guitar part relies on sparse chord voicings and single-note lines that demand precise muting to avoid muddiness.
• The main challenge is tonal restraint: keeping your attack light and even so the dark, understated atmosphere of the song stays intact.