In high-tempo jazz/bop stuff, the hi-hat is always snapping two and four. That is literally lesson one of a drummer's jazz/swing class. Very little else the drummer does will be on a downbeat in that style of music, unless it's a high-school stage band and all he can master is the "ding dih-dih ding" pattern on the ride cymbal.
I'm a jazz cat and do dozens and dozens of trio and quartet gigs per year, and no "jazz cat" who isn't a sad parody of himself counts aloud or snaps during a break. Very rarely do we ever start off a tune with snaps either. Most incarnations of these groups I play with start off with either the drummer giving you 2 and 4 on the hat for a couple bars, or the leader of the band counting off at the top with numbers and "tongue clicks" where the tongue clicks are on 2 and 4.
"Un [tch] two [tch] Un two three..." (You almost never get four in the second bar of the count off because the horn(s) will have a pickup).
(It IS a sad parody now that we all say "Un" or "wah" instead of "One," but that's because of Jamey Aebersold being so deliberately enunciative of "One" we do anything
not to sound like him).
A samba/Brazillian tune will almost always be counted of by the drummer and/or percussionist setting up the beat.
Every conservatory jazz student in his freshman year is taught to practice with a metronome exactly as 69strat is suggesting, on two and four. Furthermore, elicross is exactly right. Start on low tempi and keep working your way up. Also, nearly every beginning jazz student
is encouraged to get that foot tap happening on two and four.
Chuck, a drummer IS tapping his left foot (on two and four) at 220+ BPM songs, while doing WAY more other stuff with the other three limbs than we guitarists do. If he can't do it, he can't play jazz. Indeed, if you watch a truly accomplished drummer, he is actually tapping all four beats with his foot, but often hitting heel-toe-heel-toe, where the toe tap "chicks" the hi-hat. Why the heck can't we tap our foot on 2 and 4 also?
That said, my foot tapping started out more as marching. What I did (as encouraged by one of my profs in college) was ever so slightly march to the beat (on songs with reasonable tempi). Anyone who was ever in a high school or college marching band (or the military
) knows the downbeat is on the left foot. Thus, 2 and 4 are always on the right foot.
Just like OSA suggests, after a time, your own beat-keeping devices will become internalized, and foot taps are simply felt inside the player. However, if I'm playing a wide-open bop tune where the drummer gets to solo a bit and deliberately turns the beat around several times (listen to any Dave Weckl solo), I often fall back into a light march step to make sure I don't get turned around.