Grooves · 92 BPM · 4/4 · straight · 20 bars · brand new

The pop backbeat on cajón

Bass, tick, crack, tick. The groove that fits most songs ever written.

What you play

B bass · S snare · g ghost · rest

Skeleton only4 bars · 1 written ×4

Bass on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, nothing between them. Stay here until it is boring, because boring means steady.

With ghosts8 bars · 1 written ×8

Every and becomes a ghost. Keep them quiet enough that the bar still reads as four events, not eight.

Driving variation8 bars · 1 written ×8

An extra bass on the and of 3. One stroke, and the groove stops sitting and starts pushing. Use it for choruses.

64 BPM

startpass

How to play it

1Play Skeleton only and count the ands out loud without playing them, so the gaps are already in time before you fill them.
2Move to With ghosts and keep the ghost hand resting near the wood. If you have to lift for a ghost, it will come out too loud.
3Take it up , then swap into Driving variation for eight bars and back again, so a chorus can arrive without you playing louder.
4Record about 90 seconds of With ghosts in headphones and listen back for whether 2 and 4 arrive early.

Listen forFour clear events a bar, bass snare bass snare, with the ghosts audible only as motion underneath, and 2 and 4 landing square on the beat.

start 64 · pass 92 BPM · take about 90s

Record a take

I start the backing at 64 BPM, count one bar, and stop after about 90s. Phone about a metre away, facing the front plate. Headphones, or the microphone hears the backing as you. You get my notes within a minute of sending it.

Watch out for

• Ghosts creeping up until the bar reads as eight equal knocks
• Rushing 2 and 4
• Getting louder rather than busier when the groove needs to lift

The one cajón groove that fits most songs ever written: bass on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, ghosts in between. Broken down and playable tonight.

If you learn one groove, learn this one. It fits an enormous amount of the music you already know, a guitarist will be glad you know it, and it is four strokes.

Bass on 1, snare on 2, bass on 3, snare on 4. Say it: boom, crack, boom, crack. Fill every “and” with a fingertip ghost and you have the finished article. The three sections above build it in exactly the order that works, and the third shows you the one stroke that turns a verse groove into a chorus groove.

Why yours sounds flat

Almost always the ghosts. This groove has eight strokes per bar and only four of them are meant to be heard as events. When the ghosts creep up to snare volume the bar turns into eight equal knocks and the pulse disappears. Play a bar with the ghosts completely silent, four times, then let them back in at the quietest level you can still feel.

The other one

Rushing the snare. The backbeat is the note people lean into, and leaning means arriving early. Thirty milliseconds early on every 2 and 4 is enough to make a whole band tense and it is completely inaudible from behind the box. Exercise 3-1 is this groove with a recorded take, and it will tell you which of the two you are doing.

The exercise underneath it

3-1 - The groove

Boom - tick - crack - tick. Half of pop music lives here.

Practise it with Rafa

Read about this

Your first cajón grooveOne bar that fits half the songs you already know, step by step.
Ghost notes: the quiet strokes that make a grooveThe near-silent taps between the loud notes, and why yours are probably too loud.