Put on Getz/Gilberto and go hunting for the drums. Milton Banana is there the whole way through, playing a brush in one hand and a stick against the snare rim, and he sits so far under the guitar and the voice that you have to look for him. Bossa nova is played at a volume most drummers never practice at, and that one constraint shapes everything below. Three layers go on in order across the four exercises: a hi-hat ticking 8ths, a bass drum figure that comes around every two beats, and a cross-stick on the snare rim. The notation keeps the hi-hat closed from the first bar to the last, and the cross-stick needs a stick in the snare hand, so the restraint has to come out of your hands rather than out of your gear. Keep the whole stack under a spoken voice, hi-hat soft, cross-stick just under it, kick felt more than heard.
The kick arrives in Exercise 2 and never changes after that: 1, the & of 2, 3, the & of 4. Read it as one two-beat cell played twice, a downbeat followed by an offbeat three 8ths later. You may already own the pattern, because it is note-for-note the pop kick from Kick Variations back in Foundations. What changes is the volume and the company it keeps. Played this softly, with a hi-hat whispering 8ths on top of it, the figure stops pushing the bar forward and starts rolling underneath it, and the & of 4 reads less as a lead-in than as the far edge of a loop that keeps turning over.
Making the cross-stick click, not crack
Lay the stick across the drum with the tip on the head, anchor it with the heel of your hand, and pivot the shaft down onto the rim. The hand never leaves the drum, so the motion is a small pivot rather than a full stroke, and what comes out is a click instead of a crack. Exercise 3 puts that click on 2 and 4, the plainest way into the style; you have already read son and rumba clave on cross-stick in Understanding Clave, so the grip is familiar. Two details make it easier than it looks. Every cross-stick in this lesson lands on an 8th the hi-hat is already playing, so the hands always strike together and the only thing you have to separate is volume. And in Exercise 3 the cross-stick and the kick never share an 8th, so each click drops into a rest the foot has left open.
Moving the cross-stick off 2 and 4
Exercise 4 lifts the click off the downbeats and puts it on the & of 1, 3, and the & of 4. Count the gaps: three 8ths, three 8ths, then two across the bar line. That is the same 3+3+2 cell you know as the 3-side of the son clave, nudged one 8th late, so if you start it on 1 you have played the clave and not the bossa figure. No click lands on 2 or 4 now, which is why this version stops sounding like a rock beat in disguise. It is also the only voice in the lesson that needs a full bar to come around: the hi-hat repeats every 8th and the kick every two beats, so until the cross-stick moves here, nothing on the kit tells you where the bar line is.
Two of the three clicks now land with the kick, on 3 and the & of 4. The & of 1 is the one standing alone, an 8th behind a bass drum you have just played, and with no foot under it, it is the easiest one to place late. Build the stack in order and skip no rungs: loop Exercise 1 until the hi-hat is boring, add the foot, add the cross-stick on 2 and 4, then move it. If a layer gets louder when the next one goes on, drop back a step.
Three faults show up first. The hi-hat creeps up, because 8ths at ♩ = 92 are easy and easy playing gets loud; barely audible is the literal target, not an exaggeration. In Exercise 3 the click sits exactly where a backbeat sits and rock reflex will want to accent it, and a bossa with a backbeat is a slow rock groove with an odd kick. And the two offbeat kicks drift, because the & of 2 and the & of 4 are the only foot notes that fall between metronome clicks. Run a quarter-note click and check that each lands exactly halfway between beats; the hi-hat is playing those same 8ths, so the reference is right above the foot.