A local Maine drum legend named Dick Demers created a few hundred different variations based on Syncopation, mostly original, but some not. He compiled them into a book called "No End to Control." You can contact him through email:
[email protected]
One of my favorites is using a 5/4 bass drum/hihat pattern with a 4/4 jazz ride pattern, two and four backbeats and sing the syncopated line.
I have something very similar. Did this guy you're referring to go to North Texas? My teacher, Randy Drake, went to UNT, and gave me a copy called, "Melodic Line Coordination" or something like that. And yeah, it's like really really really intense, long and challenging.
I've gone through some of it, but after a few pages I sorta of got the big picture, and ever since I started to customize my own exercises to fit the musical situations I was encountering.
For the Syncopation solos in the middle of the book. (I think there are 8.) Here are a few core concepts:
-Straight or Swung 8ths
-Hand ostinatos (8ths, 16ths, jazz ride, triplets, any combination)
-Adding feet ositnatos (jazz feet, samba feet, tumbao feet, baiyao, etc)
-Melodic line assigning (any limb)
-Stylizing (buzz's, accents, rimshots, orchestrations, etc)
-a more advanced concept is filling in notes between the melodic line. So if you play the melodic line in swung 8ths on your kick drum, you fill in every triplet snare between.
The amount of variation is staggering! The more you practice this stuff, the easier it gets though, and the more coordinated you become.