Songs · 120 BPM · 4/4 · swung · 23 bars · easy
How to play When the Saints Go Marching In on cajón
A swung New Orleans two-feel. Simple, and everybody joins in.
What you play
B bass · S snare · g ghost · restIntro2 bars · 1 written ×2
Four bare snares, one per beat, like a drummer counting a marching band in. Two bars and everyone knows where the beat is.
Verse8 bars · 1 written ×8
A two-feel: bass on 1 and 3, snare on 2 and 4, ghosts light. Keep it under the singing. This is accompaniment, not a solo.
Chorus8 bars · 1 written ×8
Ghosts fill in and the groove doubles up underneath. Same accents, more motion, so it lifts without getting louder.
Last chorus4 bars · 1 written ×4
Extra bass on the and of 3 and the snares open right up. Last time through, so it should sound like it.
Outro1 bars
One bar, then a bass on the downbeat of the next and stop.
How to play it
- 1Play the four bare snares of the Intro and make all four sound identical. A two-feel leaves an uneven snare nowhere to hide.
- 2Move to the Verse and let every ghost fall late, almost onto the next beat. Say the swing out loud and let your hand copy your mouth.
- 3Run the Verse into the Chorus and back, twice, without changing the volume of a single accent.
- 4Play the form end to end , then straight round again without stopping. Finding your place a bar after getting lost is what lets you play this with other people.
- 5Record the whole arrangement in headphones, about 45 seconds.
Listen forEighth notes plainly swung rather than straight, a bright and even snare on 2 and 4, the & of 1 and 3 left empty through the Verse, and a Chorus that lifts by filling in rather than by getting louder.
start 84 · pass 120 BPM · take about 46s
Record a take
I start the backing at 84 BPM, count one bar, and stop after about 46s. 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
- • Straightening the eighths into a march
- • A dull or uneven snare, which a two-feel exposes immediately
- • Filling the gaps in the Verse that the singer needs
- • Reaching for volume in the Last chorus instead of opening the snares up
A full cajón part for the traditional When the Saints Go Marching In: a swung two-feel, where the accents go, and how to lift into the last chorus.
Every busker, church band and campfire in the English-speaking world knows this one, which makes it the single most useful tune on this page. It is also a good first play-with-other-people song, because the form is short and it comes round again quickly if you get lost.
It swings
The eighth notes are not even. The “and” sits late, closer to the following beat than to the one before it, which is what gives it the New Orleans roll. If you play the ghosts dead straight it turns into a military march, which is a different and much stiffer song. Listen to the playback here rather than reading the grid literally, because a grid cannot show swing and this is the one place that matters.
The two-feel
The verse leaves the “and” of 1 and 3 completely empty, and that space is deliberate. It gives the singer somewhere to be. When the chorus arrives you fill those gaps with ghosts and the whole thing lifts without a single extra decibel, which is the trick worth stealing from this arrangement.
What to get right first
A clean, bright snare, because in a two-feel there is nowhere for a weak backbeat to hide. Half the notes in the verse are snares and they are all exposed. The snare page covers what to fix if yours is dull or inconsistent, and exercise 2-3 is this skeleton with a recorded take.
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 get a clean snare sound on cajónThe crack at the top corner is your backbeat. Here is how to make it speak.