Heart-Shaped Box

Heart-Shaped Box was originally written by Nirvana, from their In Utero album. It’s one of my all-time favorite songs.

Kurt Cobain was enigmatic. Behind every musical great is a strong original identity — sometimes deliberately conceived, other times completely innate. Cobain’s was clearly the latter: genius, simple guitar riffs married to a Beatles-like sense of vocal melody. Bleak lyrics. Defiant distortion. Every song felt like a hit.

I’ve been spending time with composer Ramin Djawadi’s piano arrangements from HBO’s Westworld lately. I’d never considered Heart-Shaped Box as a fingerstyle piece — until his version broke it open and made it feel possible.

My arrangement is loosely based on the Westworld version, but I used my own structure throughout, and added a couple of melodic licks that just felt right.

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Djawadi is most famous as the Game of Thrones composer. I’ve created fingerstyle arrangements for the entire world of GoT.

👉🏻 Game of Thrones: all themes + TABS

How to play Heart-Shaped Box | fingerstyle guitar

The guitar tab is 3 pages long and beautifully written. Although the chord shaped are relatively easy, I would characterize Heart-Shaped Box as best for intermediate guitar players and up.

Enjoy, the guitar tab is available below:

Here’s my song structure in accordance with the guitar tab:

Intro, Verse 2x, Chorus, Post Chorus #1

Verse 1x, Chorus, Post Chorus #2.

[guitar tab] **Westworld: Heart-Shaped Box | Fingerstyle Guitar

Heart-Shaped Box is played in a one half step down/ drop Db tuning. Your tuning will look like this from low to high: C# Ab C# F# Bb  Eb. Or depending on your tuner, it will look like this: Db G# Db Gb A# D#.

The easiest way to think about this is: tune your guitar down one half step, then drop your low E (6th) string to match your D (4th) string.