A large slice of the jazz repertoire is in bossa-jazz feel: tunes by Jobim (Wave, Desafinado, Corcovado, How Insensitive), tunes by Carlos Lyra, and many of the standards that the Bill Evans/Stan Getz axis brought into the jazz canon. They're played with the bossa kick pattern and cross-stick on 2 and 4 from the Brazilian tradition, but with jazz-style ride accents and Chapin-style snare comping figures. The result is a hybrid: the rhythm section's foundation is bossa; the soloist treats it like a jazz tune; the drummer plays both worlds at once.
You can think of this as bossa-with-jazz-vocabulary, or as jazz-with-bossa-feet. Either framing works. The exercises below assume comfort with the basic bossa pattern (from Bossa Nova) and add three layers in sequence: jazz-style accents on the ride bell, the bossa pattern at jazz medium-swing tempos, and Chapin-style snare comping over the bossa foundation.
What's Different from Pure Bossa
The kick is the same (1, & of 2, 3, & of 4). The cross-stick is the same (2 and 4, simple version). What changes:
- Ride hand often plays the ride cymbal (not the hi-hat), with accents on the bell on beats 2 and 4 — like a bossa cáscara translated to ride.
- Tempo is faster — pure bossa lives at ♩=92; jazz-bossa lives at ♩=120–150.
- Snare comping figures from the jazz vocabulary are added on top of the bossa cross-stick.
Exercises
Standard bossa: hi-hat 8ths, cross-stick on the & of 1, 3, and & of 4 (the clave-flavoured pattern), bossa kick (1, & of 2, 3, & of 4). Same as the Bossa Nova lesson but at ♩=130 — faster than pure bossa would normally sit. Play the snare line as cross-stick. The cross-stick should be a soft click, not a snare hit; the dynamic level of the entire groove is quiet.
Hand has moved from hi-hat to ride cymbal — same 8th-note pattern, but on the ride. Accents on beats 2 and 4 — strike the bell of the ride for those, the bow of the ride for everything else. (Visually you'll see the accent marks above the staff.) This is the move that makes a bossa feel like a jazz tune; the ride bell on 2 and 4 has a horn-like ping that signals to the soloist that this is the swung world, not the strict-bossa world.
The cross-stick voicings (the snare-line notes) include both the bossa cross-stick figure AND a single jazz-style snare comp on the & of 4. Articulate the difference: cross-stick = stick laid across the rim, soft click; snare comp = full snare hit with the tip of the stick, louder. Same notation line, two different sounds. This dual-articulation is the signature of bossa-jazz drumming. Loop until your left hand is reliably switching between the two articulations on demand.
Two bars: bar 1 has the bossa cross-stick pattern plus a jazz-style snare comp on the & of 2; bar 2 has the same pattern plus a jazz-style snare comp on the & of 4. The cross-stick (rim click) and the snare comp (full snare) sound different — even though both are notated on the snare line. Together with the ride-bell accents on 2 and 4 and the bossa kick underneath, you have the full bossa-jazz texture. This is what Edison Machado, Tutty Moreno, or Paulo Braga is doing on a Jobim record.