With a student I've been working on a Blue Note type groove a la Cantaloupe Island, and the linear quarter notes lesson (pp. 8-9) in Ted Reed's Progressive Steps to Syncopation* seemed a good place to start. Just teaching somebody a finished beat off a record and saying OK, now you know “the song”— it don't work that way, there's a creative language involved.
* - I think Google will like me better if I write out the whole title like none of us have heard of it.
So we'll start building that with the linear quarter notes from Reed. A good place to go from there is to do the same thing, but moves some notes around. Like, let's play the note on beat 4 late— put it on the & of 4:
The easy drum set application for this is to add 8th notes or quarter notes on a cymbal, maybe add hihat with the left foot on beats 2 and 4, or on all four beats. Play rim clicks on the snare drum and we've got some variations for a loose-form boogaloo beat, maybe a cha cha.
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