Once you’ve got the hang of a reasonable amount of standard 8th note rock vocabulary, it can be fun and useful to learn a whole load of variations for the hahat/ride pattern to allow you to spice up your grooves. One very common and popular option is to play offbeat (or upbeat) 8ths on the hihat or ride which means we’re playing just the &’s. It takes a bit of thought to get the hang of the coordination but if you have a decent grasp of a variety of bass and snare variations in an 8th note beat, it’s a really fun challenge. The feel of these grooves is very bouncy and forward-moving. You’ll find examples of this kind of groove in dance music, disco and ska and reggae too.
Here’s a PDF that covers a fair amount of ground and goes with this video: