 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I am joined by Mark Beecher, the president of the National Association of Rudimental Drummers, voting member of the Grammys, creator of the DVD Art of Ancient Rudimental Drumming, a performer with many great artists, teacher at Drexel University. Mark, you're quite the, you've quite the resume. How are you? Oh good. Thank you so much for, thank God with this coronavirus going around. I'm glad to be vertical, you know. Yeah. I'm really, thanks to all the medical professionals and first responders out there. Absolutely. Thanks to them. Yeah. No, that's very true. Yeah. So we're recording this obviously both at our different houses and stuff like that. So I'm just grateful that you could, you know, I think it's a good time now that we do have time to do things like this and talk to each other. No, thank you for the invite. Absolutely. And I'll say real quick that Brandon Faulkner was the man who connected us and got us, got this set up. And I just love that when people say, hey, you guys should talk and here we are. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much, Brandon. Appreciate it. Cool. So today's topic is basically the history of rudimental drumming, which is a pretty broad topic. There's tons of stuff to cover. So why don't we jump right in and you can take it back as far as you can go with the history of rudiments and rudimental drumming. Yeah. Well, Bart, it goes back to the pretty much to the middle ages. That's where we get, where you see it coming in. And it was as drumming and in the history of percussion and drums. I mean, there's always been a connection between drumming and dance. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And it started out obviously with, not only with dance and entertainment in culture, but also in the military for communications. So before they had iPhones and walkie-talkies and radios, the drum was, the drum and fife were the two things that were used for communications and sending signals across a far distance, across fields, a battle. And the drums especially, now the fives are very high register so you could hear them, but the drums even more so were used for communicating and sending signals. So not only in the military, but also in very a lot of indigenous cultures, the drum was used for communicating. But yeah. So we see some of the first notations for drum, what we would call maybe rudiments. One of the earliest documented forms is in this book called Orchessigraphy by this Frenchman, Twanowar Bo. And he wrote this book Orchessigraphy. And he has this notation, this primitive drum notation. Now, up to that point, there really wasn't much drum notation at all because, well, first of all, people didn't think drummers were musicians. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, true. Probably in some bands, we still get that, right? And all the drummer jokes and all that stuff. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. But yeah, so it took a while, it took all those years. I mean, no, no, we have recorded human history goes back 5,000 years, pretty much recorded human history. So it was only up until the 1500s, the 16th century that we start to see this drum notation. So this book by Twanowar Bo is Frenchman. The book is written in a dialogue between a teacher and a student. And in this book, he's talking about dance and the different aspects of dance in their culture in France. And he mentions about how the drum was used to help with the dance. And as we know, it's kind of embedded the feeling of the rhythm. We have our heartbeat. So yeah, that's kind of where we, it's kind of an rhythm is in bread in us, in everyone. And we certainly see children are very percussive at an early age. We see them, they like to take their hands and strike things. And sometimes we'll see children at a very early age, like we did with Buddy Rich, where they just had this at 18 months, he's a part of his parents vaudeville act. I mean, he was just a total child prodigy. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it doesn't happen all the time. But we do see young children with that ability because we have that sense of, I mean, the arts is a God given a thing that all humans are given to. We can sing, we have the voice. And I mean, the earliest instruments are the voice and percussion. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard it referred to as the, I believe it was in an earlier episode with Angela Sells. It was talking about how it was the mother drum. And it's, it reminds you of your mother's heartbeat. Exactly. And it's so true. I mean, it's nature. Exactly. I mean, you've heard that. Yeah. You know, maybe unconsciously, we've, that was that heartbeat of our mothers was in our brains. And subconsciously, maybe we've, that's part of the whole rhythm, the rhythmic process that we, that happens. So, so, yeah, so this 20 or bow documented this. Documented this. Before him, was it, was it maybe passed down? Yeah, it was all by, yeah, it was all by a road. Yeah, it was all by a road. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So, and he, he also would notated with, with words underneath the notes. So, yeah, so you could kind of figure out how a rhythm would, would go. For example, he had like, what one example of rhythm would be tan, tan, terry, tan, tan, tan, tan, terry, tan. The terry would be like, yeah, sixteenth notes or eighth notes, depending on how fast you're saying it. Yeah, which we still kind of do today with like Pat Boone, Pat Boone, Debbie Boone. Exactly. Exactly. So, so for our bow, he was writing tan, tan, tan, terry, tan, terry as the sixteenth notes and, or eighth notes and, and tan, tan as quarter notes or, or eighth notes. Cool. So, yeah. And then there, and also with, I'm not too, moving head a few years later in Italy, there was a, another gentleman, Bonaventura Pistofilo. And in 1627, he, he released a book by the name of entitled Il Tornio. And it had pretty much the same notation. Now, our bow was using a five line staff, like we see today, but the notes were all on one line. So, in drum, the modern notation, most of the snare drum notation is on the C line of staff. Sure. Well, this was pretty much, we find that pretty much on the same, on the same line. So, so you'll see it on the B line. And now, Pistofilo, he had his notation on the A, on the A line. And then, so, so for those first, I say the first, like say the first hundred years, we're seeing that the drum notation, all on one line, with the, with the words underneath to figuring out what the, what, like what hand is being played. Yeah, that's interesting, because I guess everyone in the world is basically learning, it's just starting. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, interesting. So if we could say, like we were saying, for all those thousands of years, nobody was notating drum music. Yeah, so you had, for, so for our bow, you had tan, terry and fray. Now, fray was supposed to be four quavers, four taps of the stick. So, the other notation was the fray, the word fray, F-R-E, that, that was for four taps of the stick. Okay. So, tan was one tap, terry two, and then fray was like a roll, say four or a roll. Gotcha. That's interesting. Yeah, and then in El Torneo, in, in Pistofilo's book, he has tap-pa, tap-pa, tap-pa, like ta, and then ta, tap-pa, tap-pa, for his, for his notation. Now, let me ask you this. So, these guys are putting this all together, and maybe we take a sidebar and I can ask you, what is, so, so, what I'm getting at is, when did the actual, are these considered rudiments at this point? And, and then on top of that, can you maybe give, so everyone is on the same page of all levels of learning, what is the definition of a rudiment? Okay, well, that, that term actually came in with Charles Stewart Ashworth, who was the, he was the drum major of the United States Marine Corps Band. So, he came out with his new useful and complete system of drum beating at 1812. We've heard of the War of 1812 where, yeah, so, Charles Stewart Ashworth was the, he was the drum major for the Marine Corps Band, and he released this, this, this manual with drum rudiments, and that was where we first see the term rudiments. Gotcha. That's good to know. So, then going back to what I was saying before about, so, these guys are basically documenting, I would guess I would call them early rudiments, or like different rhythms and patterns, right, in Italy and in France. Okay. Right, right. So, we have, we have strokes, you know, differentiating between the right hand and the left hand. Sure. And then, and then later as, as time moved forward, we start to see in the 1700s. So, we, we went, we go from the 1500s into 1600s, pretty much with the same notation and, and what one popular method of differential between the right hand and left hand was, was poo too. Hmm. The right hand was poo. The left hand was too. So, and poo was at POU. Okay. POU. Okay. Man, they really, I didn't realize how prevalent it was to like verbalize. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. So, well, and I think that comes off of the fact that because everything was up to that point was by root. Yeah. They're vocalizing a lot of these rhythms. So, they finally wrote them down and when one person wrote them down, then they just kind of followed suit with, with the notation. Right. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. So, yeah. So, so with the left hand being poo and the, and the right hand being too, you see that notation. There are a few early drum manuals in the 1700s by, by some revolutionary war drummers. So, they were, and these are some of the earliest drum manuals that we have actually by revolutionary war soldiers. So, we can see the rudiments that they were using. And we, you know, these copies are available. You can go to two of them are in the Massachusetts Historical Society. So, you can go check them out. Some, a few of them are available online. You can see bits and pieces of them. And a friend of mine, a friend of mine, Pfeiffer friend Ed, Edmund Boyle, who lives about 10 minutes from me in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. He, he not only sells my drum video, but he sells all the, pretty much all the manuals early drum manuals that you could ever want. So, cool. If you go to bfeiffer.com, like B-A, B-E-A-F-I, you know, B-E-A-F-I-F-E-R, bfeiffer.com, you can pick up these, these manuals. That's pretty incredible to see the actual photocopies of these actual manuals from this, from the, the 18, 1700s, 1800s. And you can see the progression of the rudiments. Yeah. So. That's fascinating. So then they would write them out, obviously, you know, they would notate things with a, you know, ink and a quill. Exactly, exactly. And then copy it right with like a printing press, I'm probably, whatever they, or the slabs or whatever they would need. Well, in this, in these, these early, these Rev War drummers, they were actually diaries. So there, it's their handwritten diaries that they never reproduced. So it's just for them. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, but they documented, and I mean, here we are reading it. I'm looking at this, this photocopy of this one by Benjamin Clark. He was a drummer from the Rev War. And I'm looking at his rules for the drum, and he has the long roll, the 10, the nine stroke roll, seven, five, three, the double drag, single drag, the roughs. Wow. So there he has a list of the rudiments that he felt were the important ones. He also has flamadittle. He has the paradittle. Really? Yeah. Right. So, you know, you're seeing some of the rudiments we're still playing today, but you're seeing it written in with, you know, the right hand on top and the left hand on the bottom where sometimes you're versed. Yeah. Wow. But that's before the actual, like you said, 1812 was when the rud... Exactly. Right. Before it was formalized. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Like many things with drumming, it seems like it was like, it was just like jazz almost, where it's pulled from a thousand different places into one, you know, it becomes one thing later on. But it seems like this has just been building for hundreds of years. Exactly. Interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, so like in the, this Charles Stuart Ashworth, in his manual, the left hand is on the top and the right is on the bottom. And he was got, like his influence was, he was looking at some of the, now a lot of this came from, well, the first, some of the first real, the drummers that were some of the more well-trained drummers that you found in Switzerland. And they were the Swiss drummers were the mercenaries. So they were part of, you've heard of the Swiss army and, well, the Swiss mercenaries were hired by other countries to fight. Napoleon hired the Swiss mercenaries. And so these mercenaries, these Swiss drummers were traveling all around the world fighting for these other countries. And even as they were in their travels, they were picking up things as well, other military drum beatings. But, but they were especially like the Swiss mercenaries were pretty fierce fighters. Of course, now it's a neutral country, but they still have. I didn't know that. So I want to like go into this even further, because when you said Swiss army, I'm like, I, I don't know anything about it. I know Swiss army knives, obviously. Right, right. But so you're saying they're like the drummers are mercenaries who are fighters or are there a group of mercenaries who also have drummers in their group who are, you know, the guys who? Well, yeah, the drummers were the, and the Fifers were the ones giving the signals. Yeah, sure. Of course. So without the, without the drummers and Fifers, like they wouldn't be able to do, they wouldn't be able to march and step in, they wouldn't be able to hear their signals across the field. Wow. So like you said, like Napoleon would say we need more fighters. Exactly. Or let's call the Swiss army. Yeah, let's call the Swiss army to come help us out. And actually in America, we, George Washington did the same thing. He brought over General Lafayette from France. And also General Von Steuben from, he was a Prussian German Prussian soldier. Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, and especially at Von Steuben, he wrote a manual for the troops and mentioned the importance of the rudiments or the drum signals. And now, you were saying this before and just to make sure I fully understand, so in my limited knowledge of this before we were talking, I've always heard that I have equated rudiments with Switzerland. Yes. And I don't know why, I think I know why now because of what you just said of these guys traveling all over and gaining this knowledge from all these different, you know, places they've fought. That's fascinating. Exactly. And people were, and some of the militaries from the other countries, they would pick up stuff from the Swiss drummers and vice versa. And so you'll see a similarity in French rudiments and Swiss rudiments. There are a lot of similarities. Sure. Yeah. Wow. Cool. That's unbelievable. I had no idea. Yeah. And well, of course, I don't know if you're familiar with one of the rudiments that you can use on the drum kit. I still call it a drum set. I mean, the original term was trap set. Oh, yeah. I think drum set, drum kit, pubs, whatever the hell you want to call it is. Right. I think the kit kind of came out of the British invasion. We had everybody call it the drum set before the Beatles came over and then they heard Ringo calling it the drum kit. Now, while it was cool to call it a drum kit. So before that, everybody called it a trap set or drum set. Sure. Set of drums. But you can call it whatever you want. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, so the rudiments progressing from Europe into, over into the British Isles, and then as the settlers were coming over from Europe, so were all the culture, the music, and for the military, when the military was being formed from the colonies, those, what would you call the American colonies, they were borrowing their, a lot of their calls from the British. So they were using a lot of the, they were using the British manuals for their, for their education, their instruction. One of the, one of the manuals that was pretty popular at the time was from this manual by Sam Potter. This is a British manual. And he was a drum major in the Coldstream Regiment of Footguards. So for under Charles IV. So, so you have, you have Potter's manual coming over and for the, for the musicians and military people that were coming over from Britain, from, from the UK, they were, they were picking up the, the English rudiments, which were some influenced from Europe, other parts of Europe. So you have this, you have this melding pot of drum rudiments, right, from Europe and, and the UK coming over into America. And so you'll, you'll see a lot of, I mean, some of the, the main similarities are the flam, the, the long roll, the double syrup roll or the long roll, if you call it that. Sure. Now, this again is probably, I'll ask the stupid questions that maybe someone out there is thinking. Is there, is there ever any, I guess that maybe it wouldn't happen because battlefields are so huge. But if, if there's two countries or groups or regions fighting, let's say America versus, you know, the revolutionary war, with England, are there ever any confusion over the troop, like the different groups of drummers from the each side playing similar patterns? Is that a dumb question? No, no, no, it's not a dumb question. And they, well, the, the, the one thing that, that say in the, in the American Revolution, the one thing that, that a lot of people don't know, like, I've done some, I do a lot of work entertaining the, the tourists in Philadelphia. I've done that for many years now. We haven't done it lately because of the, the coronavirus, but I mean, most of my life, I've been entertaining tourists in Philadelphia. And you'd be surprised how many people know nothing about their American history. In fact, in fact, Europeans know more about American history than Americans do. So. Great. Yeah. And I know how it's pretty bad. But, you know, like, I'll have a, a revolutionary war uniform and somebody will say, are you supposed to be Abraham Lincoln? And it's like, what? Yeah. No. No. That's fine. But, but now we'll be wearing our, our red, regimental uniforms. And people say, are you the British? You know, I thought, I thought, you know, you're the red coats. Well, the, the American soldiers were wearing that the musicians wore red. Now, the British also wore red too. Yeah. But the, the Americans, the, the, the American soldiers, troops were wearing that the musicians would wear red with blue collars and, and, and sleeves, whereas the British were had red with white. So, but the red, the red you could be seen at a far distance. So now some of the, some of the beatings would be a little different. They would have some of the same kind of, they would have the same, maybe like say a rougher, they would call it rougher drag. Yeah. Like the two, two grace notes with a left and the main stroke with a right, either called a rougher drag. Sure. Now they would take that and put it in a different combination than say the British. Okay. So they would, they would be, there would be different. They, they would change up the beat. So there wouldn't be confusion between the troops. Yeah, because that could be a problem. Yeah. We're, I could even, I mean, it'd be dirty, but I could even see you using that to your advantage to like confuse people. Like some espionage type. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. But, but yeah, I mean, there was, you know, so you do have a, they were using the same rudiments, you know, they were using though, they're all using long rolls, the double-circ roll. Yeah. But you would have to change it up as to not confuse your troops with the other ones. So yeah, but then like I said, but then the other thing that decided whether it was, hey, are they from our side or not, where they're, where they're uniforms. So, and the reason why they, again, the, the different colors or the red, the red uniforms for the musicians so they could be seen through the battle, it was easier for them to be seen at a, at a greater distance. Sure. To know that, okay, pay attention to this guy. He's going to tell us what's going on. And also, they probably wouldn't go out of their way to go and start killing musicians, even. Well, believe it or not, they would. Yeah. Well, in fact, that was the problem, like even in the civil war, you know, kill the messenger because if, if you don't want, we don't want the, we don't want them to send the signal. So kill the drummer first. Sure. Sure. Wow. Yeah. So a lot of, a lot of these young boys are joining the, the army, you know, at 12 years old and sometimes even younger. I mean, they would sneak in, they wanted to join, they thought it was cool to join. Someone would sneak in earlier. And then, but, you know, you have really young, young boys and they're just thrown into learning an instrument. And not all the, the technique was, was that good? It was something that George Washington complained about Von Steuben. So they, they were on a campaign to improve the, the musicianship so that the beatings were more accurate. So you're bringing people in that aren't musicians and just giving them, handing them a drum and say, okay, play this. You know, that almost speaks to the, like the nature of people thinking, oh, it's just a drum. Exactly. Exactly. Wow. That's crazy. George Washington commented on it. Oh, are you kidding? Oh, the drummer was really, I mean, he made, he would put out orders to bring drummers for, at one point they needed a drummer and he put out an order to bring this drummer from, from one town to, to where they were stationed. So otherwise they were, they were, they were sunk without the signals. So without the drummer, the drummer was really important. I mean, this is a really important part of world history. I mean, people don't realize it, but even for the lay person, the average person, I don't, I mean, not only do they not know their own history, but most people, even a lot of historians don't realize the importance of drummers, especially in the military and our world history, not only for culture, but for their survival of, of our country. The drummer was really important and, and for, in order for them to, in order for the, the armies to survive and to win the battles, the drummer was really important. Yeah. So he, he had to know all these signals that they learned. And, you know, I mean, there was like, there was a, the troop, there's the march, there's the preparative, there's the retreat, there's a church call, there's a, they call it the roast beef, their dinner call. So they have all these calls that the drummer, and then, yeah, you know, you have all these, and the troops are relying on these calls to one to go to bed, Reveley, three camps was, was Reveley used to wake up the troops. And a lot of people don't know that taps, you know, you hear the term taps at, at intervals. Well, that really was the drummer that was the one who originally played the taps for lights out. And it came from the tap that it was short, some people say it was short for tap toe, the word tap toe or tap two. And what that was was that was the signal for the bars to put the taps up. So yeah, so crazy. It is crazy. It is crazy. So the drummer is giving the signal for everybody to go to sleep. And if they didn't put their lights out, I mean, they could be actually, they could be shot or hanged for not obeying the orders of turning the lights out at night. So that's a, that's an appropriate reaction. Yeah. Believe it or not, I was, I was, there's the story of a, of a, of a soldier not putting his lights out. He was writing a letter to his wife. And the commander came around and said, soldier, why weren't your lights out? He said, well, I'm writing a note to my wife. He said, well, you can also add that you'll be shot at daylight for not obeying the orders. I mean, they were the, you know, yeah, yeah, I know it's, it's pretty brutal. Yeah, brutal. You know, people think that you think of the revolutionary word being the powder puff, the people wearing wigs and it wasn't a powder puff. We wore is all worth bad. So yeah, I think that's a great point of like, almost like, I don't know, movies, you almost think of like, I forget, I think it was the revolutionary war, but like, like the Patriot. That was a great, that was a great one. Yeah, it was a great one. But I just mean, you think of these movies, which that actually was a great representation. Yeah, it really was. But, but like, even like, World War One, the Civil War, all of these wars are just every war is war and all wars are bad. And, you know, there's no war that's worse than any other one. So, you know, hats off to our service people. Absolutely. But now, getting back on track here a little bit. So, so rudiments were, were in Europe, starting in earliest notation was in France. Right. Then in 1627 went to Italy. Right. Then we got sort of mixed in with the Swiss, where then it's spread around Europe. Right, right, right, right. Correct. Yeah, the actually, there's, there's records of that, that's what they call the side drum. The earliest actual record of a, of a, of its, like, say a snare drum or drum being used, like maybe the first gig on record was in the 1300s in Basel, Switzerland. Okay. And really, the drummer was the town crier. So, the drummer was the one that announced, made all the announcements, you know, I hear you, hear you, you'd see movies with somebody shaking the bell. Sure. Well, it was really in, in the earliest notation that we have a drummer getting paid was he was a part of the, the, he was a part of this, this city. He would be being paid by the city to make the announcements, the news for the day, for the city. So, that was in the 1300s. So, we have that, if you go to Basel, Switzerland, you can see the record of the drummer and he was listed as part on the, on the payroll for working for the city for giving the news of the day. So, the drummers were they so long ago. That's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. I mean, if you, if you think about it, you know, you're, this is, you know, the earliest drummer's gig was being us like a CNN and news host for the city of Basel. So, again, the drummers, the importance of the drummer in society, you know, was really, and they're playing, you know, they're playing rudiments, they're, they're playing strokes. And as, as we saw, like you mentioned in our Bose book, we start to see, you know, differentiate between right and left and, and right hand and left hand and that carried through, yeah, Italy, then England, this, they have this record of this, it was called the English March, they call it. So, as there was the voluntary before the March and then the March. So, there were two parts of it, but Charles the first, King Charles the first actually put a warrant out for the drummer to play this March. So, and it has the putu, putu, you know, has that underneath it. It's all on the same line. Wow. So, yeah, so we go from the 1300s to the 1500s in France and 1600s in Italy and to England. And it comes across to the American colonies. Across the American colonies. And then they, then with the soldiers being trained, they're learning the rudiments. And then we have these, these early manuals. We have, we have the Charles Stuart Ashworth's book. We have, even we have one, we actually have some other manuals from London. We have one is called the Young Drummer's Assistant by Lawman and Broderick. That was 1780. There was a manual called the Academy of Armory by Randall Holm. That was in 1688. And it actually mentioned both a rough and a drag. There's been this debate, okay, what's a rough and a drag? Because in the, in the 26 rudiment, large rudiment list, you'll see the, the two right, two right, or two left grace notes, and then the strong right hand or reverse, those three notes as a rough. But then now they're calling it a drag. Well, actually in this Academy of Armory by Randall Holm in 1688, he actually mentioned, it's all, he doesn't show notes, but he mentions the rudiments. And he actually mentions a roof, R-O-O-F-E and a drag, D-R-A-G-G. So they're both in the same book. Now, now there's, I was in this, this email list for a debate that was going on, okay, what's a rough and what's a drag? That this has been going on for probably since, since the Nard rudiments were put together, the, since the Nard rudiment list was put together, there's been this argument. Well, I've seen in old manuals, there were drag used for three, those three notes. That's interesting. So there's some debate, I guess of, but that's true with a lot of things with the origins of something, especially because we're not that far. Now, you're probably familiar with the term the molar stroke. We've heard this, yeah, okay. Well, Sanford Moeller, I don't know if you know anything about Sanford A. Moeller at all, but. Dom Famulara just came on the show and did a whole episode on molar Gladstone and stone. So, okay, okay, good. Let's see how much I retained. Okay. Go ahead and test me. All right. All right. So Sanford Moeller was a famous drummer and teacher. He also a great drum maker too, but he also taught Gene Krupa. We all know the name Gene Krupa pretty much. I'm sure. Right. Sing Sing Sing and played with Benny Goodman had his own band. Right. Well, at one point he wanted to learn the rudiments. So he went and he heard about this guy, Sanford Moeller, that he's the top rudimental drummer. If you want to learn about military drumming and rudiments, go to Sanford Moeller, which he did. And the thing about Moeller was he, at one point, he, he had seen the, he was still alive when the Civil War veterans were still around. And you can actually, I show a lot of my students this and other drummers this, which is probably hard to believe. I mean, if you ask somebody, hey, are there any films of Civil War drummers at all or musicians or anybody? You probably say films of people who fall in the Civil War. No, I don't think so. But actually, if you go on a YouTube, there's a video of Civil War veterans playing fives and drums. Wow. Okay, these guys are, these guys are 90 years old and they're still playing rope tension drums with a lot of power. So you can actually go on YouTube and see people who fought in the Civil War playing the instruments that they were playing on, which is really incredible. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So if you put in GAR, Fife and Drum, GAR, the Grand Army of the Republic, that's the Union Army. If you put in GAR, Fife and Drum, you'll see this video of these Fifers and these veteran fight 90-year-old veterans playing the Fife and Drum. It's amazing. That's so cool. Yeah, I know. So Moeller saw these, these veterans playing, it was like, how they have so much power in their playing. So he would go at one point, he went to a veterans hospital and he was talking to these, some of these veteran musicians, Civil War musicians and they were showing him this technique while we use like a whipping motion when we play. So he took that same, you know, he talked to several of them and he narrowed it down to this is the technique that they used, which is based on an upstroke and a downstroke. So you have, it basically three strokes and my drum teacher was William Reimer, who was a national champion, a four-time national champion drummer who had played, had, this is back, he was a national champion drummer back in the 40s, played and all the drum chords he played in were all national champions. He taught other national champion drummers. He was a drum judge and he has spent time with all these, a lot of these famous drummers learned the Connecticut style of drumming, which is still probably the center for all rudimental drumming is in Connecticut. That's where a lot of my friends are. We have a drum group here in, in the Philadelphia called The Troublemakers. It's made up of, of student, former students of Bill Reimer. Well, we call ourselves The Troublemakers. That was what Bill Reimer called the six stroke roll actually. Oh, really? He was, he was, Bill Reimer was introducing a lot of these rudiments, the Radamacue six stroke roll on, in the field of competition and drum and bugle chords way before the drum chords are, that are playing them now. Like he was, he was a big innovator on the field of competition. So he's introducing a lot of these rudiments back in the 40s and 50s. Now it's the six stroke roll. It's a part of drum set. It's part of drum core. So yeah, Reimer was teaching. So he, they didn't know what to call it. They didn't call it the six stroke roll. He called it The Troublemakers because people were having trouble learning it. So he called Troublemaker. That's funny. So we just, yeah, we decided to call our group The Troublemakers, but it's awesome. Yeah. So anyway, so, so with all this, so you have a lot of the rudimental drummers because a lot of the regiments were located in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island. You have a lot of these, a lot of the schools, actually some of the schools for military musicians were in New York anyway. So one of the manuals that probably one of the most popular manuals that was published was Bruce, as called the drummers, drummers and pfifers guide by George B. Bruce and Dandy Emmett. And yeah, so that their school was in New York. And so they were, they were teaching, really teaching drummers and pfifers how to play. Because again, there was this Lincoln talked, a grant, president Grant talked about how we need to improve the musicianship because, as I mentioned before, these young kids are coming in 12 years old, 10 years old, you know, 13, 14 and just thrown into learning to play the drum. So we need to get the musicianship up to par. So they actually formed these schools where they would actually start to train these drummers in the proper manner. And that's interesting because I always wonder about you kind of think like, how was this formalized? Like, and I've heard on some previous episodes where people would say, well, early on it was like, you know, your dad was a drummer and he taught you or the neighbor was your grandpa was, but it's good to know that, okay, so then this is when, let's say by presidential decree, they were like, all right, we kind of sound a little sloppy here. Exactly. And this, yeah, let's tighten this up. Exactly. So it started with George Washington. And it continued through to through the Civil War. There was this desire to, you know, we need to start cleaning this up. We need the musicians up to step up. So yeah, so they formed these schools. And then a lot of these manuals started appearing more manuals on drumming and fiving and bugles too. So, so, you know, we have the, the, the Bruce and Emmett their, their book, Dan Emmett was the, the gentleman who wrote Dixie, the tune Dixie. Oh yeah. So there was actually a film about Dan D. Emmett and Bing Crosby played, I don't know if you're familiar with Bing Crosby, but of course. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So Bing Crosby actually played Dan Emmett in this movie and it was called Dixie. It was called Dixie, but they don't show it. They pretty much abandoned it because Dan Emmett, and historically, was toured around in blackface. So I knew where that was going. I was going to say, everything ends up being kind of racist. Yeah. I know. I know. Well, unfortunately, that's a sad part of our, as we know, a sad part of our American history. Yeah. So, yeah. So, and I can certainly understand why we wouldn't, we wouldn't want that to be shown, you know, we won't. It's like the birth of a nation. Exactly. Yeah. DW Griffith film. It's like, it's a part of the history, but God, it's not. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. That's, it needs a, yeah, it needs adult supervision. Yes. Absolutely. Not even to be seen because you don't want to even want that in the minds of people. No, no. It's horrible. But now that we're at the Civil War and all this stuff, it's obviously, I know the term rudiments and all that stuff had been formalized. What does it look like compared to, again, as a guy who didn't grow up, you obviously are the king of all this. So how did it look compared to today where we've got the set amount, what did you say, 26 official rudiments? Yeah. Right. Right. How does it look compared to that where like, it's very standardized. The Vic Firth of the day is printing a poster that has all the rudiments on it and I'm kidding. But like, where did they, you know, was it really formal? Well, it was formal in the sense of the military. And so, you know, from the Civil War, that's where the 19th century, the 1800s is where you start to, what's all starting to come together even more. It's in its infancy back in the, you know, in Basel with the town prior drummer. And also there's a famous painting going back to the Middle Ages. There's a famous painting called the Night Watch. And it's by Rembrandt. And you'll see in the lower, the lower right hand corner of the painting, you'll see a drummer with a side drum that with a snare drum playing. So it's one of, it's a famous painting where you're, you know, one of the first early paintings where you can see a drummer playing with the drum off to the side, off to the left hand side on the angle. Oh yeah, I'm looking at it. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. So that's one of the earlier. So you can kind of get an idea of what the drum looked like in comparison to a human. Yeah, there were pretty large drums back in the 1500s. Oh my god, yeah. So yeah. But then going forward, so to the Civil War then we're looking more, we're looking more standardized. The military says these are our rudiments. These are what we play in those schools. So it's exactly that there's manuals that, you know, people can, and the average person, they were starting to publish some of these rudiments, these manuals, and you could pick them up. And in fact, some of them were published right here in Philadelphia. So yeah. And so as musicians leave the military, they'll bring all that information with them, those techniques and knowledge with them, teaching other people. And then some of them would have those manuals with them. So they're teaching their students even post a military as veterans they're teaching. So then what started to happen too, then with these veteran groups, these veteran groups had the idea of putting together performing groups, bands. So they would put together these, like American Legion posts, veterans of foreign war posts would put together marching music groups, which became drum and bugle corps, fife and drum corps, fife, drum and bugle, and also some other organizations like churches, Boy Scout troops, would put together these groups and then they would start to compete. So, Oh, so that's, that's kind of when it started to get to where we get now, where there's, you're not, we're not out in, you know, modern wars playing snares to signal. Exactly. So, so yeah, I know. So as you're, as these manuals becoming more available, and then people are copying some of those rudiments, somebody like, like Mahler, who was taught Jean Krupa, spending time with the, spending time with Civil War veterans. He's documenting all this down and he releases his drum, the art of snare drumming. He releases his book, which becomes real popular Ludwig, Ludwig starts to publish it. And when you start getting these, these drum companies like Leedy, Leedy and Ludwig, Ludwig they were, they were publishing like the first Nard book, well, Ludwig sponsored Nard, the National Association of Rudimental Drummers, they were the ones to sponsor. And they, all the, the, the drummers that met for Nard all met, they were at an American Legion convention. So that's where they all met again, coming together of the military. And, and they were veterans. So you got the veterans, military people, with all their knowledge of the rudiments, getting together and then competing, they would have individual contests and they would have the drum and bugle or competitions and fife drum and bugles. And then they also had fife syndromes from, you know, in America from playing from the 1600s up until through the 1700s to, and then into the 1800s. And then through today we still have drum and bugle chord, we still have fife and drum chord, we have fife and drum bugle. So that tradition is, has been maintained from the beginning of our nation through today. And, and again, the competition was a means for there to be incentive for people to get better and improve their musicianship. And I can, I've, I competed, I competed individually. I won a medal individually with a buddy of mine, Andy Riemer, who was my teacher's son, who is now, he's Andy Riemer's now the principal percussionist with the, with the Pittsburgh Symphony. So he and I was our first time out competing. We competed as a duet up in Connecticut. We had to go to Connecticut to compete. But yeah, so we won a second place medal for our first time out, which we were, we were pretty pleased with. So yeah, that's great. That's super cool. Now, let me ask you this, when did, when did Nard, or the National Association of Rudimental Drummers, form? Because again, it's that, it's that switching from this is military to like you said, Ludwig is sponsoring it and stuff. I mean, that's exactly when did that start in 1933? That was at the, at the convention, the American Legion Convention, these drummers all happened to meet. And so they decided, Hey, we want to, let's form an organization just for drummers. So they did that. And they, so they met and they, they decided to, to, they gave it the name, the National Association of Rudimental Drummers. And they thought, well, we need to establish a set of rudiments, a list of rudiments. How do we do that? So they finally, they got all these, all the manuals that they thought were the most important manuals they got together. And then took the best. So there was the, there was Ash, I mentioned Ashworth, Charles Stuart Ashworth, there was his manual. There was the Bruce and Emmett, we talked about that. There was a Mueller's book. Then there was a Gardner, a strube that was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1869. So it was a little later than Bruce and Emmett. The Bruce and Emmett book came out in 1862 from 1862 to 65. And then the strube manual, which is probably one of the more influential manuals that came out in 1869. Then there was John Philip Sousa put out a manual. So you know the name John Philip Sousa. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, yeah, so his manual came out. So they used that. That was in the copyright for that was 1886. And so you had, you had Bruce and Emmett in 1860s, strube 1869 towards the end of the 60s. And you had John Philip Sousa, 1886. Mueller, and then Mueller's was copyrighted in 1921 to 1929. That's when it was first published. So that's pretty early in the 1900s. But they, they were taking all of these and kind of filtering it down to the best. How many did they end up with? They ended up, they ended up with a 26. Oh, wow. So some of the, like the Ashworth had 14 rudiments. Let's see. Then there was Bruce and Emmett had 25 rudiments. Mueller had 26 rudiments listed. Strube had 25. So you had pretty much, you know, around the same numbers for rudiments listed in these. And most of them all had the same. There, there are only a few that like the Bruce and Emmett had flamm accent number two. That wasn't, they didn't list the flamm accent number two in the 26 rudiment list. They also, John Philip Sousa also listed the four stroke rough. Now they didn't list the four stroke rough in the, in the 26 Nord rudiments. But most of them all had, they had the long roll, the five-circle roll, seven, nine, 10, 11, 13, 15, flamm, rough, single drag. They all had the single paradiddle. Now some of the, they didn't list the triple paradiddle. They didn't, they decided not to list the triple paradiddle in the 26 rudiments. And there's one, there's one called the lesson 25. Now people are like, why are they called the lesson 25? Well, it happened to be the, the 25th Strube, a gardenry Strube, he, he referred to his, the rudiments as lessons. So it happened to be the 25th lesson, rather than calling it the 25th rudiment. So because they didn't know how, what to call it, they called it lesson 25 because it was the 25th rudiment in Strube's manual. Makes sense. It's a cool name. I mean, they have one, this lesson, like they all kind of have these cool little like names to them. So. Right, exactly. And actually that, the, the mentioning the lesson 25, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that same rhythm you find in the Arbo manual, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that. So, and some manuals, there were, there were a few manuals where they, they didn't notate rudiments in the, that is during the, this, these, the Civil War period. There were rudiments that they just wrote down fanatically what, or they would say a five, a three and a two. Well, and for the lesson 25 in one of the early drum manuals, they called it a three and a two. Well, and it was, it was, it started with a seven stroke roll. So it would be a seven stroke roll, not a lesson 25, but they would say a seven, a three and a two. And so it was a seven stroke roll, the three would be the rough and then the two, or the two remaining. So you got the, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that. So that what they call seven, a three and a two. Gotcha. But so yeah. So then they decided to call that the lesson 25. So at that point, you had the, you had the 26 rudiments. And then later, when Nard was having problems financially, they, Ludwig decided it was too much for them that to the point they disbanded Nard, Ludwig, they were at about almost up to 10,000 members. So imagine licking the stamps of, of 10 out of 9,000 letters or, or news like a Seinfeld episode. Yeah, exactly. So, so they decided, okay, it's too much. We don't want to put the money into that. It's, it's enough. And at that point, Percussive Arts Society was gaining momentum. And they decided they were getting more into promoting marching drumming, military drumming. So at that point, they decided to take over the promotion of, of rudiments. And they got together a group of, of the top rudimental drummers, and they had a meeting, the Percussive Arts Society, and decided, let's update the list from the 26 rudiments to 40. So, and they added some extra rudiments to the, to the list. And actually, believe it or not, towards the end of the, the demise of Nard before I started up again in 2008, they, there was talk about updating the list of the Nard list. So even among the Nard members, they were considering updating the list of the 26 rudiments. So that was the Percussive Arts Society took on the, the 40, they, they, they up the amount to 40 included some of these, we were talking about Swiss rudiments, they included the Swiss Army triplet, uh, which is called the Swiss Army triplet because it's used a lot by the Swiss Army in their, in their training. That makes sense. Yeah. So, um, yeah. Is it still, would you say that it's at this point, April 27th, 2020, when we're recording this right now, is it pretty much locked in or is it an ever-changing thing? It's, it's, it's somewhat locked in, but it's still evolving. When I was in playing in drum corps back in, in the 70s, I played in several championship corps and, um, I played alongside one drummer, um, Tom Hanum, who was, was voted into the Hall of Fame, a pretty popular, uh, drum corps teacher and performer. And, uh, he and I would just spend hours, uh, shedding and, and challenging each other with some of these, uh, hybrid rudiments. We would, we were kind of in the stages of developing some of these hybrid rudiments that are now a part of the, of, of the standard among drum corps drummers. So, you say, what, what happened, you know, you try, you get a little board playing, okay, 26 rudiments. Let's challenge ourselves. Let's try putting a diddle on this rudiment where just a single stroke would be, or a flam and two, and like a flam and two diddles. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. So I think that's why they're so, I mean, for so many years, that's why they've been so beneficial to drummers is because you can take, you can look at this one thing, let's just say a parrot at all and do a million different things with it. And I think that's why they have such a longevity and are so beneficial. Yeah, exactly. And, and, uh, real quick, I know we're, we're getting short on our time here, but, um, we're talking about the drummers. Um, and I mentioned about that YouTube video with the, the GAR, Fife and Drum. You can see the veteran. Well, what was interesting, I was talking to, uh, Daniel Glass, uh, I don't know if you're familiar with Daniel. Yeah, he's been on the show. Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, great drummer and good friend of mine. And, uh, we were talking and, uh, he was putting together his, um, century project and we're talking about the Civil War drummers. And I showed him this, this video of the Civil War drummer veterans playing. And we noticed on the hoop of the, the snare, the main, the main guy that was playing the snare drum was a woodblock. So it's like, wow, like he's got a trap on his rope drum. So they were actually using traps in the Civil War. So they weren't just playing, they were adding traps to get other sounds. And then, so the woodblock was being used in this video. They're at one point they're drumming and then they're playing on the rim while this guy's doing like a clogging, like tapting. So they would, they would use the woodblock for an effect like to, to symbolize somebody who's doing the clog set, they would, they would play along with them on the woodblock. So when you see the evolution of the drum set, the drum set is the military drum line. It's a snare drum, bass drum symbols. So that's, and that's where that's where the drum set, the trap set came from. And the double drumming with the bass drum. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that all came from the military. And if you watch baby Dodds, he films a baby Dodds playing, even in his book, he has, he has a, he put out a solo album. And on his album, one of his, his songs is called Rudiments. So he played, you know, talked about the mama, dad, a role. And so yeah, yeah, these early drummers, even of the pioneers of the drum set were playing Rudiments because it came out of the military and they're playing the Rudiments as a part of that evolution. And yeah. Yeah. So I love that like, you know, from a drummer starting today up to like, let's say Steve Smith or whoever, just one of these great drummers, we're all practicing the same, we're all getting the same, you know, great workout from using these Rudiments. It's just, I love that. And probably one of the more popular drummers who promoter of Rudiments is Steve Gad. Oh yeah, of course. Sure. The opportunity to talk to for a little while at one point. And yeah, he came out of drum corps. And so he's playing, I have a video, there's a very popular drum beating in Connecticut. And in the Fife and Drum Circuit, it's, it's called Crazy Army. And this was a kind of a standard, it was, it's comes from the Army 24. There was a standard drum part that what you'll find in the Bruce and Emmett book. And they ended up being called, they were called the Army 24, because kind of the standard 24 drum beating for a 24 piece. So it was called the Army 24. And so these guys took the Army 24 and beefed it up and syncopated it and developed this beating. They, and they ended up calling it a Crazy Army. So instead of the Army 24, they call Crazy Army. And it started making the rounds in the drum, in the drum corps circuit. And being a Steve Gad was in the drum corps circuit, he picked up on this, this was one of the beatings that you had to kind of learn, not of as a rite of passage, but yeah, it was one to learn it. Yeah, sure. So he now, whenever he does a drum clinic, he always plays the Crazy Army. So I, so I have a video from my video, I have a clip of myself with a bass drummer playing Crazy Army on the rope drum. So it's awesome. You know, you can see the, you know, you can see the similarity. I mean, Steve Gad plays the authentic Crazy Army, but he brings in his bass drum and funks up the bass drum part, you know, for, but he's playing the, he's playing the Crazy Army as it's written. So he's a perfect example of using the rudiments and exactly. Exactly. Also a Billy Cobham, Billy Cobham played in drum corps, he's another drum corps guy. Man. Yeah, who's the other guy I'm thinking of, too, that's a drum corps guy. Oh, I mean, right at this point, there are a lot of guys, so yeah, played in drum lines in high school and. Well, and I want to say too that I'm sure people are thinking about it about like, why aren't you getting to that? I'm working on an episode with like Scott Johnson to do, like, I'm working on an episode that's more just the more marching and drum corps. So there's plenty of stuff that I want to save time. Tommy Igo, that's a guy. Oh yeah. Yeah. Of course. He's a drum corps guy. He knows his stuff. I want to save time right now as we wrap up for you to tell people where they can find you, if they want to become a member of Nard, all that good stuff. How does all that work? Okay. So to become a member of Nard, just go to our website. It's nardnard.us.com. And yeah. And also, you can roll on there. I have the 26 rudiments are on there. You only need to learn the first 13 for two. You have to take an exam with a somebody that's already a Nard member You can contact me at mbdrums at aowall.com. If you send me an email, you'd like to become a member. I'll forward you to one of our members in whatever state you're in. And if they're close enough, you can have an exam with them. If not, we can do a Zoom exam through Zoom. Yeah. And also, my video is available through bififer.com. That's Ed Boyle's site. He's a fifer, but he also sells a fret doctor, which is he actually was originally supposed to be fife oil for the oilier fife, but it ended up guitarists use it for their frets to keep their frets oiled. That's awesome. A little side business there. Yeah. But he also sells all these drum manuals. So if you want to learn about, if you want to have a copy of all these great drum manuals, go to edbififer.com for all those drum manuals. Cool. Yeah. And I don't know if I can give a shout out to some of my adzint endorser. Sure. Yeah. Thanks to Evans. Dia Dario. I don't know if you know this, but Dia Dario, the guitar strings company, owns Evans. Yes. They're now making, they're now making face shields for the medical community. I know. I know. It's so cool. Yeah. So thanks to Dia Dario and Evans for that, for supporting it. Also, thanks to Ludwig Droms, Vic Firth, Drom Sticks, and Drummer Service. Drummer Service is Andrew Riemer. I mentioned my buddy. He was the best man in my wedding. He's he's the principal percussionist at the Pittsburgh Symphony and he took over his dad's drum making business. So he makes, they make rope drums and drumsticks and made drumsticks. So that's important to keep that going. Oh, yeah. And thanks to my wife, Connie, and my son, my son Nick, and my daughter-in-law Grace, and to my troublemaker drum court colleagues, Lily Bodick, Middlebrooks, Tom Middlebrooks, Steve Gillespie, Steve Kirkpatrick, also to my friends in Connecticut, champion drummers Jim Clark, Charlie Poole Jr., and Cliff Bowers, who are big influence in our drumming down here in Pennsylvania, and U.S. Army, Old Guard, Fife and Drum Corps, Sergeant Major Mark Riley, as well as to Grammy award-winning drummer Peter Erskine and his wife Mutzie of their Fuzzy Music label. And I'd like to mention too that my album, my latest album, Battlecry of Freedom, Fife and Drum Music of the Union Army and Anti-Slavery, is available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and Google Music. And it features the great Pfeiffer, Brittany Primavera of the U.S. Army, Old Guard, Fife and Drum Corps, an Army band. Also, my hats off, and we just lost a few really good great drummers, rudimental drummer. We lost Jack Pratt. He was in the Hellcats, the West Point Hellcats, and taught the Hellcats, taught some drum core. He just passed away, Jack Pratt, John Pratt. Also, George Carroll, who founded Williamsburg, Fife and Drum Corps, and the U.S. Army, Old Guard, Fife and Drum Corps. George Carroll passed away. He was very, he helped me out a lot in putting together my DVD and getting, gathering all this information. Also, Alan Abel from the Philadelphia Orchestra just passed away a couple days ago. He big influenced a lot of people. I had the fortune of playing with him a few times, and he was Andrew Riemer's teacher, teacher from any classical percussion. But he's a great rudimental drummer, too. But yeah, thanks again. I want to thank you, Bart, for this opportunity and Brandon Faulkner. Thank you so much. Absolutely. This has been great. I love learning things like this, and I hope people feel like this, who are listening out around the world. We don't get to hear this information very often from people like you, so it's an honor to have you on the show. So Mark, be sure everyone. That's B-E-E-C-H-E-R. People can find you online and all that stuff. Yeah, thank you. Thank you again. My pleasure. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, thank you. It was an honor. If you like this podcast, find me on social media at Drum History and please share, rate, and leave a review. And let me know topics that you would like to learn about in the future. Until next time, keep on learning. This is a Gwyn Sound podcast.