Songs · 128 BPM · 4/4 · straight · 16 bars · brand new
How to play Drunken Sailor on cajón
A shanty that drives itself. The easiest complete song here.
What you play
B bass · S snare · g ghost · restCall4 bars · 1 written ×4
Driving quarters on the bass with a snare on 2 and 4. A shanty is work music and it should sound like something being hauled on.
Response4 bars · 1 written ×4
Ghosts fill in so the answering phrase has more motion than the call. Same accents, busier surface.
Everyone in8 bars · 1 written ×8
Double bass into beat 3, which is what makes a room stamp. Hold this to the end without speeding up, which is harder than it looks at 128.
How to play it
- 1Play the Call until the four basses are dead even, then run the Response straight after it with no gap between them.
- 2Practise the two basses into 3 from Everyone in on their own. That pair is what makes a room stamp and it is the only new thing in the song.
- 3Sing the tune out loud while you play Everyone in. If the groove falls apart when your mouth is busy, it is not automatic yet.
- 4Play it through twice in a row without stopping. Coming round a second time is where the speeding up shows.
- 5Record the whole arrangement in headphones, about 30 seconds, and compare the last bar with the first.
Listen forFour even basses through the Call, ghosts filling the Response without any accent moving, a clear double bass into 3 in Everyone in, and the same tempo at the end as at the start.
start 90 · pass 128 BPM · take about 30s
Record a take
I start the backing at 90 BPM, count one bar, and stop after about 30s. 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
- • Speeding up once a room joins in
- • The Response getting louder rather than busier
- • The second bass before 3 arriving early and dragging the beat with it
A full cajón part for the traditional Drunken Sailor: a driving one-bar groove, a call and response shape, and the easiest whole song on this site.
If you have owned a cajón for a week and want to play an actual song from beginning to end tonight, this is the one. Three sections, one groove underneath all of them, and a form so familiar that people will join in before you have finished the first pass.
Call and response is the arrangement
A shanty alternates a line from one voice and an answer from everybody, and the cajón part should do the same. The call is bare, the response fills in with ghosts. Nothing else changes. That contrast is the entire arrangement, and it is a good demonstration that arranging is mostly about deciding what not to play.
The tempo trap
Shanties are work songs and work songs accelerate. At 128 with a room singing along you will be at 140 by the third chorus unless you are deliberate about it. That is not a character flaw, it is what everybody does, and it is exactly the thing you cannot detect from inside your own playing. Record a take and look at the drift.
If you are brand new
Play only the call section, all the way through, and ignore the rest. Bass and snare, no ghosts, four beats a bar. That is a real cajón part and it is enough to hold a song together. Exercise 2-3 is that skeleton on its own, and how to play cajón covers the three sounds if any of them are still shaky.
The exercise underneath it
2-3 - Backbeat skeleton
Bass on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4 - the skeleton of pop music.
Practise it with RafaRead about this
- Your first cajón grooveOne bar that fits half the songs you already know, step by step.
- How to play cajónThe whole instrument on one page, in the order that actually works.