read a lot of piano scores, and work your way up from there...then slowly incorporate it to the drum parts

Its not EXACTLY the same, but coming from a piano background i could adapt to the drum scores rather easily. Maybe thats me, but i find a lot of kids who have learnt piano doing the same as well. Time signatures, bars, notation, rest etc are all the same only difference is we're playing the bass clave. But based on the piano's rhythm you could roughly come up with a similar beat for the piece. Try out with "A dozen a day" for all the Yamaha students you will know what i mean.