Here’s a book review that’s way overdue: Rudimental Patterns by Joe Cusatis, from 1968. It’s somewhat of a companion piece to Joe’s earlier Rhythmic Patterns, from 1963, which I wrote about back in 2023. I wasn’t too keen on Rhythmic Patterns, which is why I haven’t had much motivation to dissect the rudimental follow-up.

Rudimental Patterns is basically a “rudiments on the drumset” book, which is not an easy topic to tackle — despite many drummers insisting otherwise, rudiments are music, just not drum set music, since many rudiments were developed hundreds of years before the modern drum set, and the two preeminent rudiment lists were not compiled by drum set players. As much as I would like to have a favorite book on this topic, I still don’t, and Rudimental Patterns is not the ticket for me.

Unfortunately, Rudimental Patterns has a lot of the same problems as Rhythmic Patterns — the fills are too rote, redundant, and by the numbers to feel a strong musical connection with. More than anything else, both books seem caught between presenting pure calisthenics and proper licks you could actually use to good effect during a performance, and they struggle to do either.

Rudimental Patterns might be the more frustrating experience because most drummers realize that some degree of extrapolation is required to get a lot of rudiments working on the drum set. But in this book, you’ll find yourself playing a lot of very similar ideas over and over again, with slight changes depending on the sticking. As such, the book gets much too close to the philosophy that practicing rudiments is good “just because,” i.e., something magical will happen if you force yourself to use a particular sticking for no particular reason. 

This is best evinced by the tragically short paradiddle section. Despite being one of the best coincidental overlaps between rudimental drumming and drum set playing, the 71-page text only gives the paradiddle a paltry four pages, all of which are about playing the same rhythm with slight changes to orchestration, most of which you can just play with singles. 

It’s also worth mentioning that Rudimental Patterns only has seven rudiments out of the 26 that were standard at the time: the five, seven, and nine stroke rolls, as well as the flam, and single, double, and triple paradiddles. A large chunk of the book focuses on five unofficial rudiments: the three and four-stroke “ruffs,” as well as the more obscure five, seven, and nine-stroke ruffs. 

The four-stroke ruff section is probably the best part of the book, especially at the end, when you navigate a mix of 16th notes and 16th triplets, with some kick drum notes thrown in:

Not bad. Sadly, the other ruffs and short rolls didn’t leave much of an impression on me; the phrasing around the drums (combined with, surprisingly, a complete lack of accents) is too much of a “bam-bam” style, as Todd Bishop calls it.* Many of the rolls are played on the toms, which is never a good idea; again, despite what you might hear online, double stroke rolls were created for articulate marching snares, and really don’t work the same way on toms.

There’s also a disproportionate amount of time spent with some of these licks. The five-stroke ruff gets six pages, while the seven and nine-stroke ruffs only get one and two pages, respectively. 

This is probably a good moment to mention how Rudimental Patterns reuses a lot of the three-beat 4/4 polymeteric phrasing from Rhythmic Patterns. However, this time around, a lot of the patterns are three measures long, instead of using some sort of turnaround. Most of us fill over powers of two beats (i.e., two, four, eight, etc.), so unless your career conspicuously calls on you to fill up three measures with fills, this will likely spoil the book’s utility even more. 

After the ruffs and rolls, we get to flams, with two pages of flam taps, and then a delirium-inducing 14 pages of Swiss army triplets, which are run into the ground, and then some. Rudimental Patterns wraps up with paradiddles — the double and triple paradiddles getting three and two pages, respectively, and most of the material is spent on the crossover jive that returns from the first book. 

Combining paradiddle-adjacent licks with crossovers really lays bare the futility of crossovers. There is absolutely no reason to play the following as written unless you are trying to make your life as difficult as possible:

You can just use singles. Actually, you should just use singles.

This one is more interesting:

But, again, this sticking should be among your last choices — it’s much better to use different variations of the paradiddle. You know, the thing that might was well have been designed for stuff like this:

I don’t like beating up on books, but Rudimental Patterns really didn’t click with me. Once more, it seems torn; it’s not robust enough to be an abstract rudiment method, but these licks aren’t useful enough to feel like you’re building a practical vocabulary. The paradiddle section was honestly heartbreaking, a huge missed opportunity. 

The book feels like a time capsule in more ways than one. Rudimental Patterns makes it clear that drumset players had a very different attitude towards rudiments back in the day. With 19 rudiments missing and inclusion of non-rudiments, it feels much less dogmatic than the rudimental attitudes we’re used to these days. It’s hard not to conclude that rudiments were once treated by some as a bit of a novelty on the kit. 

Like, what if we took this:

And played it like this:

Neato! Unfortunately, there’s a lot more that could be going on. 

* ^ Funny enough, Todd quite likes Rudimental Patterns. As of 2011, anyway.