Here’s another rudiment review: Rudimental Primer by Mitchell Peters.

Mitchell Peters was a percussionist for the LA Philharmonic and was a pretty prolific author, having written at least 18 method books, including nine snare drum-centric ones with neat color-coded covers. Peters’ first was Odd Meter Rudimental Etudes from 1967, but Rudimental Primer is fairly recent, from 1990 (I believe his very last book is the rather inconspicuous and not well-known Etudes for Snare Drum from 2003).

I have some strong opinions about the rudiments, and accordingly, I’m pretty particular about the best ways to learn and practice them — Matt Savage’s book is my definitive favorite method. Rudimental Primer is worth going through, but I have enough reservations about it that it has not dethroned the king. 

The book is actually similar in structure to the Matt Savage book, where each rudiment is broken down with several exercises, delineated with Hindu numerals (“1, 2, 3”): 

Afterward, you move on to short etudes, delineated with Roman numerals (“I, II, III”): 

Unlike the Savage book, which has one long etude for each rudiment, Rudimental Primer has several, varying from 8 to 32 bars in length; both the drills and the etudes have a mix of different time signatures, including 5/8 and 7/8.

It might be somewhat inaccurate to call them “etudes,” since they’re short and have no tempo markings or dynamics (aside from the occasional crescendo). As such, there is quite a bit more openended-ness when compared to the Savage book. It’s a problem with a lot of technique drum books; when there’s no recommended speed, you could play an exercise forever, getting the tempo faster and faster.*

Still, I did enjoy many parts of this book — a lot of the exercises are fun, with some interesting interpretations of the rudiments, and the etudes/mini solos are good as well. Shorter etudes are certainly less taxing on the brain, as I tend to find myself redoing longer performances over fine details, like flubbing a dynamic change. 

I also found myself enjoying the calisthenic patterns a bit more than the Savage book; the etudes really are the star of that show. But ultimately, I think the Matt Savage book is the superior text.

To start, I actually have the same gripe as the Savage book: both use their own order of rudiments. Naturally, both problems have the same solution: go through them in whatever order you want. Still… it’s a little annoying, and Rudimental Primer inexcusably has no table of contents.

Now, let’s be clear: I can’t say that there’s anything especially scientific about the order of the PAS list, and I often complain about how the flam drag comes before the entire drag section. My criticism of the Savage book is that it does things like group all of the paradiddles together, so you have to cover flam paradiddles before the simple flam. 

The system used by Rudimental Primer isn’t as annoying, but it is harder to make sense of: singles and doubles; the five, nine, thirteen, seventeen, seven, eleven, fifteen, six, and ten-stroke rolls; the single, double, and triple paradiddles, and the paradiddle-diddle; flam, flam taps, flam accent, flam paradiddle, flamacue, flam paradiddle-diddle, Swiss army triplet, and pataflafla; ruff/drag, single, double, and triple ratamacues, drag paradiddle № 1 and 2, single and double drag (tap), the lesson 25, single dragadiddle, and flam drag; and finally, the “four stroke ruff.”

Peters does a better job of keeping more appropriate rudiments together, but they’re still jumbled up after the fact — I have absolutely, positively no idea why the short rolls are in that order. As far as an explanation goes, Peters writes in the preface that “The order of presentation is according to category of rudiments and not necessarily the order in which they should be practiced.” 

There’s really only one thing to say:

w h a t

The book puts the flam drag near the end, which makes total sense to me since I regard it as the most difficult rudiment, in more general terms. But the exercises in both books introduce rudiments before they get their own section, which I’m not a fan of. It enhances the accoutrements an exercise gets, but it’s better to have big, holistic solos at the end of the book, as Savage does. 

Moving on, there are other, more serious philosophical issues I have with Rudimental Primer. While some of the variations of the rudiments are very worthwhile, others are not. For instance, all of the short rolls spend time playing the accents at the start of the roll:

This is not a tap roll, where the accented single is played as the start of the phrase. This is instead an accent on the first note of the double strokes. It’s a historic thing that has fallen out of favor, so it’s frustrating that the book spends so much time with it, particularly at the expense of proper tap rolls (which are largely neglected outside of the seven-stroke roll).

Rudimental Primer is one of the more modern rudiment books that’s well-known, but it can feel dated because of stuff like that (or at the very least, focused on a narrower doctrine). Some of this book seems cut from the Wilcoxon cloth, especially with the denser rolls that limit the tempos at which you can play some of these passages. That’s not a good thing.

More accent weirdness comes in the form of short rolls that are often without any accents, or perhaps the flam tap, which is extensively written with either no accents or with an accent on the first flam only:

The title “Rudimental Primer” suggests that this is meant to be a foundational rudimental text, maybe with a few sensible variations, but the book often veers into stick control territory with stuff like this. Worthwhile in the long term, perhaps, but the book’s objectives feel unclear — are we supposed to be learning the ins and outs of the rudiments, or taking them to different extrapolations?

There’s also some odd shorthand throughout the book. You’re probably familiar with the “NARD” seven, written as an 8th note offbeat and meant to be played as a 32nd note triplet roll:

Here’s something you might not be familiar with — note how the eleven-stroke roll on the top line seemingly doesn’t have enough rhythmic space:

The proper rhythmic interpretation is actually written out on the line below, oddly enough. So you’re just supposed to learn that, when an eleven-stroke roll is written on a quarter note, you actually need to play it a 16th note early.

It’s another thing from the Wilcoxon books, although most people play those as quintuplets. In any case, it should have been left behind by 1990. I suppose Peters wants to provide some notational variety, but it becomes a chore to decipher, and it shouldn’t have been part of the lesson.

Worse still, when it gets revisited later in the book, I have to pause and think, wait a minute… what is he trying to write again? †

Here’s an etude from the drag section, and it felt like I stared at the eleven stroke rolls for about five minutes:

I had to jump back 33 pages to the eleven-stroke roll section to figure out what interpretation Peters is trying to write, but since this exercise is in cut time, you would start the roll an 8th note early, with 16th note pulsation. At least, I think — it could be a quintuplet variation that isn’t properly introduced by the book.

Something that’s also not properly introduced by Rudimental Primer is how to play a nine-stroke roll over a dotted quarter:

Again, the rhythm as written simply doesn’t work, but you really have to think outside the box on this one. You can start the roll early, play the roll over a quadruplet, or do something like this and put up with the wonky sticking:

Or maybe it’s meant to be a seven, and it’s just a typo.

Indeed, there are some accent and sticking choices that are so strange, it’s hard not to conclude they are typos. For instance, the sticking in the first bar of exercise 2 looks off:

You can play it as written just fine, but I can’t explain why bar one uses singles while the rest of the exercise uses paradiddles. This is from the drag paradiddle № 1 section, so I think it’s more than reasonable to presume that the whole thing is supposed to use paradiddles.

As far as accent aberrations go, have a look at this:

Do you see it? Bars 3 and 4 are nearly identical phrases, but the last flam in bar 4 has no accent. Why? Why accent with just right? Both drags are accented, so it really doesn’t make sense.

There were at least a dozen of these moments that had me raising my eyebrows. Perhaps there’s no way to tell if these are wrong, but the asymmetry is what steers me towards believing they are typos. And if they’re on purpose, I don’t know if that’s much better.

I’m fairly certain that the original edition of Rudimental Primer does have outright typos with regard to stickings and rhythms — the copy I own is from 2009 and has “Professional Drum Shop” in the bottom left corner of the cover, with a number of changes. Make sure you grab that version to play with as many corrections as possible.‡

Lastly (as you may have already noticed), several PAS rudiments are outright missing from Rudimental Primer — the triple stroke roll, buzz roll, single stroke seven, single flammed mill, and inverted flam tap are nowhere to be found. Technically, the single stroke four is also missing, but there is a section about the “4 stroke ruff,” which, curiously, is the very last part of the book.

So… while Rudimental Primer has a lot to offer, I think it has one too many issues to dethrone Matt Savage’s book as the best rudimental text out there. It’s probably worth going through at some point, but go through the Savage book first. Rudimental Primer is an imperfect book, more than its reputation would suggest. 

* ^ Tempo markings can very easily become unproductive; the tempos in 4‑Way Coordination are downright disrespectful.

† ^ Another thing that dates the book is the numbers written above the staff to delineate which roll you’re supposed to play. I don’t like this because it negates the need to read note-for-note what’s on the page, but if it weren’t for this convention, you wouldn’t be able to play much of the book.

‡ ^ If you’re familiar with Mitchell Peters’ other works, you’ll know they have a very distinctive handwritten style, either from Peter’s own hand or a copyist. Rudimental Primer, meanwhile, looks like it’s formally engraved, which makes me wonder if Peters sent his manuscript off to an engraver who proceeded to mess several things up during the engraving process. This is also the reason why I find all the roll shorthand to be unnecessary.