twenty one pilots – Nico and the Niners (Chords)
twenty one pilots have been hit-and-miss for me in the past. But I’ve been enjoying the three tracks they’ve released ahead of their new album. Particularly the uke-featuring track Nico and the Niners.
There are two main ukulele parts in the song. The first is a straight-forward move from Dm7 (all the strings played at the fifth fret) to Am7 (all the strings played open). The second is a spacey single-note figure in the bridge.
Suggested Strumming
Intro and Chorus: The main ukulele riff uses a ska-inspired all up-strums. Four each per chord:
– u – u – u – u
Make sure you keep these strums short by muting them with the side of your strumming hand right after playing them. You can do this quite forcefully. You can hear a percussive click on these as Tyler brings his hand down hard to cut the strums short.
Verse 1, Final Chorus and Outro: Once the uke part cuts out you can use whichever ska-flavoured strum you like (I cover a bunch of ska and reggae strums in How to Play Ukulele Strums). I like to do this once per chord:
– – d u – – d –
Bridge: For the first half of these I just do one down-strum per chord. Then for the second half I use the strum from verse 1. So together they sound like this:
Breakdown and Verse 2: I keep it simple and just one down-strum per chord.
Twiddly Bits
Here’s my best attempt at the wibbley ukulele part in the bridge. It’s a little hard to pick up on exactly what’s being played.
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