[practice] Simulating Hand Claps

This won't be an explicit exercise, but just something cool you might want to try, that I'm totally stealing from a local drummer I saw last night.

Basically, it's an augmentation of playing a sidestick on the snare in a groove, that makes it sound almost like hands clapping. The context was acid jazz, and it seems like it would be really useful in that style of music or in hip-hop.

Start with a bit of a funk feel, playing sixteenth notes with your right hand on the hi-hat, but with an eighth note "pulse." Sidestick on the snare on two and four. Bass drum can do whatever you want, but if you want it to sound kind of like The Roots, the sparser, the better.

Now, on two and four, bring your right hand over and hit the snare, taking care not to hit your hand or the other stick. With your left hand muffling it, the combination of the sidestick and the snare tap results in a much more textured sound. It may take some time to get used to moving your right hand back and forth between the hi-hat and snare, but with practice, you can make your funk sound a little fatter, and fatter funk is fine with me.