Some of these Reed systems are so sprawling that you can spend months working your way through them. This one is nice and limited. There’s exactly one thing to do, and relatively few lines from Syncopation to do it with. It’s similar to a more involved Jack Dejohnette-like method we did last year.
Start with a simple right hand lead method: play the top line rhythm from the boookon the cymbal with your right hand, with bass drum in unison, fill in the remaining 8th notes with the left hand. So this rhythm:
Would be played like this:
On rhythms that have a dotted-quarter note spacing between notes— where there are two 8ths in a row with the left hand above— fill in with a left handed paradiddle, 16th note rhythm:
Easy. To work this up in a focused way, use this page of rhythms from the other day, or this full page exercise, or this exercise in 3/4, or this one. Or you can flip around in Syncopation:
On pp. 30-31, use lines 1-2, 6, 9-14, 21-24.
On pp. 34-37, use lines 6-7, 9, 11-12, 21, 23, 26, 29-30, 32-33, 36, 39, 41-48.
Get out your Bic 4-color pen and mark those lines with a green star or whatever— those are good lines for speed with any of these basic 8th note fill in systems.