Left Hand Strength and Co-ordination for Uptempo playing

These four simple exercises all revolve around playing consecutive three 8th notes with the left hand on the snare drum and the fourth note with bass drum. The aim is to work on building left hand strength but also co-ordination for uptempo playing.

Isolated these exercises won't sound very musical as comping figures, they are too monotonous, but you can develop some nice phrases from them if you use them sparingly.

Some other way to develop them are:

1.) Move the pattern around the kit.

2.) Play the bass drum beats with the Hi-Hat

3.) Play the bass drum beats as a rest.

Although intended for faster tempos, you can find ways to apply these ideas effectively to slower tempos as well. 

Next, here are four one bar ideas that use the patterns from the first set of exercises. These start to sound a little more musical. Again experiment with playing the ideas on different sounds. Try to come up with your own ideas too.

This was originally posted on "Jazz Drumming Blog" and in the "Ideas for Jazz Drumming" e-book (no longer available). This post has been revised from the original.