So, I'm going through my old teacher's book "drumming starts here" by Phil Solomon, now it's for beginners so it takes you through 1 notes, 1/2 notes, 1/4 notes, 1/8th, 1/16th on the snare drum, suggests you do a kick/hat 1, 3 and 2 4 respectively pattern (1), or a 1, 2, 3, 4 and a 2, 4 pattern (2) under it.
Basic shit.
Anyway, I am re-going through it, working on my feet, so I'm doing hats with the RH on 1, 2, 3, 4 as per his RF in "foot pattern 2" and LH snare on the 2, 4 as per LF.
The point is for a while I was ignoring all exercises that had a rest on the downbeat. Makes more sense on the snare, as per the books intent, but I wanna get my double kicks up to speed and skill, and lets face it - name a metal track that misses that down kick but starts on the off beat? No, you can't cos it sounds weak and shit.
Because of this, My left foot has suffered. My poly-rhythmic ability has suffered. My general "groove" has suffered.
So now I am literally spending hours going back and playing left leading feet with a click -xxx-xxx-xxx etc, and its time consuming and boring and makes me feel shit at drumming, and I wish I'd done 5 minutes of it each time, amidst the rest of the practice when I began but I was lazy and cut a corner and now I'm suffering.
Do I ever intend to play a gig where I miss the downbeat? Hell no.
Do I ever intend to write/play music in bizarre time signatures where I need the ability to skip the 1st note in four or some such? Absolutely. Can I do that, without being able to miss the down beat of a 4/4 pattern? No.