I understand from your guide which drums and cymbals are required for each beat but cannot fully understand the exercises. Could you please explain what the little lines on the top of the stave are for which appear above the snare beats, and also the small crotchets as seen in ex.4 for example. Also dotted notes are causing some confusion.

   The "little lines above the snare beats" are probably accents. These mean that the note is to be louder than the surrounding notes. The "crochets" [I had a hard time understanding this one - I am assuming he meant the parenthesis surrounding notes] mean the notes is a "ghost" note, which is played very lightly.

   Dotted noted carry an extra one-half the time value. A quarter note has one beat, a dotted quarter note has one-and-a-half beats (another way to think of this is a quarter note has two eighth note values, a dotted quarter note has three eighth note values).