How to play Riptide on electric guitar?

I am a huge fan of the band “twenty one pilots” and I love their song Riptide. I have been trying to figure out how to play the intro on my electric guitar for a while now so I decided to make a lesson about it.

In this article, you guys can find everything from picking, gear, techniques, and tips & tricks on how to get the best sound from your equipment. If you have any more questions don’t hesitate to drop me a line or leave a comment at the bottom of this page! Enjoy 🙂

Velocity is one of the most important things in music. It determines if something sounds good or not. Velocity ranges 0-127 with pitch going up and down. The higher the velocity, the louder your note is going to sound.

This means that if you play softly, the note has to belong in duration to compensate for its low volume.

Try this out:

– Change the velocity of the notes on your computer to 10, 20, or 30.

– Play your guitar normally. You’ll notice that playing softly will result in slow-sounding notes.

– Turn it up again to 127. If you play hard, fast and loud it sounds really good because of its power!

Depending on what kind of tone you are looking for, velocity can be great to have control over!

Use it wisely 🙂

On a keyboard, these buttons might not seem important but when using them on an electric guitar they are very different from each other! The reason why is because some pickups are extremely sensitive while others are more dynamic which means some pickups react stronger to high oscillations (high pitches) and others to low oscillations. (low pitches)

The 2 most common guitar pickups are single coils and humbuckers. 

Single coils are extremely sensitive to high oscillations while humbuckers are more dynamic. For that reason, an electric guitar with single-coil pickups sounds better with the tone knob rolled down on 10 because it’s more mellow and has fewer highs which make notes sound darker.

On the other hand, guitars with humbucker pickups sound good all over the place because they’re dynamic enough to pick up all frequencies equally! So instruments with this type of pickup can withstand a lot of gain without sounding muddy or too dark.

Try playing Riptide by twenty-one pilots at very high velocity multiple times until you notice that the frequency range of the song is very wide. This means that there are not many low frequencies which means you can use more gain without it sounding too muddy!

The reason why electric guitarists tend to like guitars with humbucker pickups in songs like Riptide is that it has a lot of high oscillations (pitches). Tones tend to sound bright when using lots of gains. It’s important to experiment with this yourself and try different things out until you find what sounds best for your taste!

The lower the action, the harder it is to press your strings down to the fretboard.

Playing riptide requires very fast picking because of its high velocity and wide frequency range. If you struggle playing this song on a guitar with low action, several things can be done:

– Change guitars (acquire higher-end & more expensive instruments)

– Go get your guitar set up professionally (requires removal of frets, leveling of the fretboard and new strings)

– Get lighter gauge strings (higher pitch -> easier to press down)

Riptide is an extremely difficult song to learn on electric guitar but I hope this article helped you out!

FAQs Section

How do I turn my guitar tone knob?

You can use a screwdriver or something small but make sure it’s not too pointy because you could damage the knob itself.

What is the difference between active & passive pickups?

Active means that both sides of the pickup produce an equal output voltage. Passive means that only one side produces a voltage and the other side is grounded.

How do I change my pickups to active?

Passive pickups must be changed to have a battery inside the guitar itself. For this reason, it is best to have them professionally installed because not doing so without experience will result in poor results as well as damage your instrument!