Jazz Ride Hand/Foot Workout
This is a concept that Dom Moio, a fabulous drummer/educator in Phoenix showed me. I believe he was turned on to it by the late, great Alan Dawson.
This is another example of an exercise that works great with Ted Reed's syncopation book, specifically pages 36-43.
It is similar to the right hand lead concept in that we are converting the eighth note (and quarter note) figures into continous eighth note triplets. The idea is to (while playing the standard jazz ride pattern on the ride cymbal):
1) Play the notes on the page with your left hand (assuming you are right-handed)on the snare and the filler with your kick .
2) Play the notes on the page with your kick drum and the filler with your left hand on the snare.
The standard jazz ride pattern looks like this:
Listen
Playing this pattern
(in a "swung" fashion) along with the jazz ride looks like this:
Now throw in the kick drum as "filler" and you get this:
Switching the pattern so that the snare part is now played with the foot and the foot part is played with the hand gets you this:
Listen (Faster Version)
This is a great exercise for building up your hand/foot independence against the ride. Again, in order for this to make sense, you must make sure you understand the relationship between swing eighths and straight eighths and how the swing eighths relate to the jazz ride. Have fun!