Another easy little practice method, for playing soloistic stuff, using Progressive Steps to Syncopation, which you can play in conjunction with this other recent item. This one uses a favorite Gary Chaffee linear lick that sounds great, and it’s easy to play fast.
The source lick is the Chaffee 5 note + 3 note linear phrase:
Here we’ll play it with the beats reversed:
Use the 16th note/8th note pages from Syncopation— pp. 22-23, lines 1-15. Ignore the written bass drum part, and play the top line part as follows. On exercises with one beat of 16th notes, play only the first beat of the lick:
Use any sticking you like on the 8th notes— alternating, hands in unison, improvise, whatever. Alternate at first. Once you can play lines 1-15 on the snare drum, you can move things around the drums, and experiment with the 8th notes portion, varying the sticking, putting some or all 8th notes on a cymbal, with the bass drum in unison.
On exercises with two beats of 16ths in a row, play this:
On exercises with three beats of 16ths, play this:
On the exercise that is all 16th notes, you can just play the lick for four measures.
Like the previous thing, I’m playing these in 2/2, so the 16th notes are functionally 32nd notes— 8 notes for one beat of music. See that previous post for recommendations of which loops to practice this with.