I actually worked on a Jazz course in the beginning of 2021, but I have to admit that at this point in time I got a little stuck. I came up with a bunch of exercises, with the main focus being able to play that standard jazz pattern on the ride and hi hat with the dominant hand and then improvise hits on the snare or other parts of the kit with your non-dominant hand.
This is actually pretty hard to do, but possible for sure. The problem was that I practiced this for a couple of months, I tried to do some of the patterns in “The Art of Bop drumming” by John Riley, and after all of that… I didn’t sound that great and definitely not that jazzy. When i use the simpler approach I outline in this video I actually sound better… Finger drumming JAZZ tutorial - YouTube
The ‘dynamics’ of jazz playing seem to be a bit of a problem on a pad controller, which has so little dynamic range. So some straightforward swing is doable (as I do in that youtube video), but besides that, it’s hard to make things sound good and not too blunt.
So that turned out to be a bit of a problem. If I cannot get things to sound good after practicing for months, I shouldn’t tell my students to go and practice this stuff until I figure out how to actually make it work.
That said, I have made some good progress with regards to improvisation and having more freedom around the kit. This has a lot to do with learning a bunch of rudiments really well and also switching between which of your two hands is the leading hand. I think for 2022, those will be the first “advanced” topics I will tackle and I’m hoping that by the time I’m done with that, I will have some new insights into how to actually make jazz playing work on a pad controller. It’s one of the few things I really haven’t been able to figure out properly as of yet 