Songs · 76 BPM · 6/8 · straight · 30 bars · easy
How to play House of the Rising Sun on cajón
The 6/8 ballad everyone with a guitar knows. Restraint is the whole job.
What you play
B bass · S snare · g ghost · restIntro4 bars · 1 written ×4
Bass on 1 and 4 only, nothing else. The guitar is doing the arpeggio and it needs room. Four bars of this before anyone sings.
Verse8 bars · 1 written ×8
The ghosts come in and hold the 6/8 lope together. Snare on 4 and nowhere else, so the bar leans instead of marching. This is the whole song for most of its length.
Build8 bars · 1 written ×8
Same shape, one extra bass on 3 pushing into the snare. Do not get louder, get busier. Loudness is the cheap way to build and it wrecks the ballad.
Last verse8 bars · 1 written ×8
Back to the verse pattern, quieter than you played it the first time. Coming down at the end is what makes the build earlier sound deliberate.
Outro2 bars · 1 written ×2
Bass on 1 and 4, then stop dead on the downbeat. Do not fade, do not fill.
How to play it
- 1Loop the Verse until the ghost stream is even and the snare on 4 is the only loud thing in the bar.
- 2Play the Intro straight into the Verse. What changes is that ghosts arrive, so leave your bass on 1 exactly where it was.
- 3Run Build into Last verse back to back and make Last verse quieter than the first Verse. If you cannot hear the drop on playback, it did not happen.
- 4Play it end to end , counting the six out loud through Build, which is where the pushing starts.
- 5Record the whole arrangement in headphones, all five sections, about 50 seconds.
Listen forSix counted and two felt, a tempo that holds at 76 from the first bar to the last, even quiet ghosts under an accented snare on 4, and a Last verse plainly softer than the first one.
start 53 · pass 76 BPM · take about 47s
Record a take
I start the backing at 53 BPM, count one bar, and stop after about 47s. 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 as the song builds, especially through Build
- • Building by getting louder instead of busier
- • Doubling what the guitar plays rather than marking where the bar turns over
A full cajón part for the traditional House of the Rising Sun: the 6/8 pulse, where to sit back, and how to build across the verses without speeding up.
This is the song every guitarist in the room already knows, which makes it one of the most useful things a cajón player can have ready. It is also a trap, because it is slow, and slow is where a percussionist’s bad habits are loudest.
It is in 6/8: count six, feel two. The guitar rolls through six notes per bar and your job is to mark where the bar turns over, not to double what the guitar is already doing. Most people play far too much here.
The one rule
Do not speed up. A 6/8 ballad at 76 has enormous space in it, space is uncomfortable, and the natural response to discomfort is to fill it and push. By the last verse an unaccompanied player is routinely eight or ten beats per minute above where they started and has no idea. If you record one take of anything on this site, make it this.
How the arrangement works
Five sections, and they are a dynamic shape rather than five different grooves. Bare bass in the intro, ghosts in for the verse, one extra bass for the build, back down for the last verse, bare again for the outro. The pattern barely changes; what changes is how much of the bar is filled. That is arranging, and it is most of what separates somebody who plays a groove from somebody who plays a song.
Before you try it
The verse pattern is a steady ghost stream with accents on top, so if your ghosts are uneven this song will show it plainly. Exercise 2-2 is that ghost stream on its own and it is worth an evening first. There is also more on getting them quiet enough in ghost notes.
The exercise underneath it
2-2 - Eighth-note ghost engine
Alternating hands R-L-R-L - the motor behind every groove.
Practise it with RafaRead 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 practise cajón with a metronomeHow to use a click so it makes you better instead of making you miserable.