Grooves · 76 BPM · 6/8 · straight · 16 bars · easy

The 6/8 groove on cajón

Count six, feel two. The rolling pulse behind a thousand slow songs.

What you play

B bass · S snare · g ghost · rest

The rolling bar8 bars · 1 written ×8

Bass on 1, snare on 4, ghosts filling the rest. Lean very slightly on 1 and 4 and the bar starts rolling on its own.

With a push8 bars · 1 written ×8

A bass on 3, leaning into the snare that follows it. One stroke, and the bar stops sitting still.

53 BPM

startpass

How to play it

1Play The rolling bar with the four ghosts left out, so the two leans on 1 and 4 are in place before anything fills the space between them.
2Let the ghosts back in and play sixteen bars without stopping, which is long enough for the roll to sag if it is going to.
3Take it up , then put With a push in for the last two bars of each sixteen and come back, so the bass on 3 stays a lift rather than a habit.
4Record about 90 seconds of The rolling bar in headphones.

Listen forA bar that rolls in two with clear leans on 1 and 4, four evenly spaced quiet strokes between them that never grow, and the same tempo in bar sixteen as in bar one.

start 53 · pass 76 BPM · take about 90s

Record a take

I start the backing at 53 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

• The six regrouping into four, which flattens the roll
• Uneven ghosts making the bar lurch
• Every slot arriving at the same weight, so there is nothing to lean on

Six slots felt as two: the rolling 6/8 pulse behind slow soul, folk ballads and doo wop, written out slot by slot for cajón.

6/8 is six slots in a bar that you feel as two big beats, three slots each. It rolls rather than marches, and once it is in your body a whole category of slow music opens up: soul ballads, doo wop, folk laments, a great deal of Irish music.

Say it: ONE two three FOUR five six. Two leans, six syllables. If you find yourself counting to four you have lost it, and no amount of hand technique will get it back. Go back to saying it out loud.

The difference from a shuffle

A shuffle also divides the beat in three, and the two are genuinely easy to confuse. The distinction is how many big beats there are in a bar: a shuffle has four, this has two. Played back to back the difference is obvious, and described in words it never quite is, so press play on both.

What to watch

The four ghosts carry the roll, and when they go uneven the whole bar lurches. They are also the first thing to fall apart once you stop concentrating, which is usually around bar eight. Exercise 2-2 is the ghost stream on its own and it is worth an evening before you come back here.

The exercise underneath it

2-2 - Eighth-note ghost engine

Alternating hands R-L-R-L - the motor behind every groove.

Practise it with Rafa

Read about this

Ghost notes: the quiet strokes that make a grooveThe near-silent taps between the loud notes, and why yours are probably too loud.
How to play cajónThe whole instrument on one page, in the order that actually works.