Wiki on Drum Rudiments - A compact history

I wrote this a couple of years ago for inclusion in a friend’s drum book. I always find it interesting and helpful to explore a bit of drum history from time to time. This is a very top-level overview of how the Rudiments came about.

No one knows when or where snare drum rudiments first came into common use. We know that drums and standardized stickings have been around for centuries, if not millennia, but there is no known record of standardized drum stickings before the twelfth century.

Beginning around 1500, Swiss mercenaries sold their services to kingdoms throughout Europe. For some 300 years they worked alongside the regular army, where the Swiss drummers influenced the sponsors’ drummers. They also picked up some of the local stickings and added them to the Swiss System. This resulted in a fair amount of homogeneity in European rudimental drumming systems. These systems were then carried by the military to the New World.

The earliest records of rudiment compilations date from the late 1700s, and when British forces took their “Duty” to America, it became the de facto standard for drumming. In 1812 Charles Stewart Ashton,  a Drum Major with the US Marines, published A New, Useful, and Complete System of Drum Beating. In 1860 Gardiner A. Strube published his Drum and Fife Instructor in New York, which laid out his25 Snare Drum Lessons.In 1869 Strube’s book was approved for use by the American military, thus securing standard snare drum rudiments their place in history.

From my Drum Dictionary The word rudiment means basic or essential. In the drumming world, the term has come to refer to any standardized sticking that presumably evolved from rudimental drumming. The rudiments were originally used to communicate signals to different sections of an army. Some rudiments date back more than 1000 years. Although most drummers will at least pay lip service to the rudiments, it’s safe to say that an impressive number of superb drum set players have never studied them.

Fast forward to the 20th century and we see the formation of new champions of the rudiments. The National Association of Rudimental Drummers (N.A.R.D.) was founded in 1933 by a number of US-based rudimental drummers. They compiled the first list of The 13 Essential Rudiments, which set a standard for their membership and also for rudimental drumming in general. The N.A.R.D. list was expanded to the 26 Standard American Drum Rudiments by 1936. In the early 1960s, the Percussive Arts Society (PAS) was established to “… inspire, educate, and support percussionists and drummers throughout the world.” The PAS added 14 rudiments to their version of the Standard Rudiments, bringing the total to 40.

Today, rudimental drumming is alive and well wherever drums are played, and the concept of a ‘living rudiment tradition’ continues, with one website documenting more than 500 Hybrid rudiments.

For more info:

National Association of Rudimental Drummers - https://nard.us.com/

The Percussive Arts Society - https://pas.org/

It's Not So Rudimentary – 11/22/20 https://drumyoda.blogspot.com/2020/11/its-not-so-rudimentary.html

Rudiments That Work Overtime -12/21/22 https://drumyoda.blogspot.com/2022/12/rudiments-that-work-overtime.html

For a very deep dive into the history of rudiments, check out: https://thedrumrudiments.com/the-history-of-the-snare-drum-rudiments/