Syncopation exercise - singles, 2-3 8th intervals

Let's start a little series here: some full page syncopation exercises, each designed for a special purpose. Good for fluency and ease of practice with certain practice methods, good for a particular challenge with others.

This one has single notes, quarter or dotted quarter (or equivalent) spacing— good for 2/2 or fast 4/4 8th note applications, or anything based on two and three note patterns. Excellent for playing with a bossa or samba feel. For triplet methods, the Ruff Bossa will be easy, the right hand accent/left hand fill way will be a challenge. Good for a floating feel with my Elvin-type method with broken triplets*. Not a lot of interest here for any long note/short note methods. Of course you can do anything with it.

* - I can't find the original link outlining my Elvinish broken triplet method, so a quick explanation:

A standard Reed method is to play the written melody rhythm on the bass drum; fill in the remaining triplet rhythm with the left hand on snare drum, add jazz cymbal rhythm and hihat on 2 and 4.

My way: Any time you would play more than two successive filler notes with the left hand, break it up by not playing any triplet partials on the downbeats. So your LH never plays more than two triplet-spaced notes in a row. You could also play only the middle partial with the LH when there's a bass drum on the &. I like to mix it up. 

Get the pdf