Best books: revisiting Rubank

The matte industrial looking horizon blue
cover has that depression era band room reek.

A fresh look at the very old, very turgid Rubank drum method books. Rubank, a series of method books for all band instruments, has been around since 1935, and is a core item in modern American school band literature. My only exposure to the book was in the 7th grade, when a teacher printed out a few pages for me. There are elementary, intermediate, and advanced volumes; here I'll mainly look at the elementary book, by Paul Yoger. 

Upshot: it's actually pretty good.  

I've never been completely happy with the available beginning snare drum books. Mitchell Peters's Elementary Snare Drum Studies is the best, but it's a little denser than it needs to be for average 5th-7th graders. 

All of these books have a few pages of fundamentals at the beginning, with a lot of verbiage, instructions on how to tuck a calf skin head, a picture of some jerk standing at a drum... all of which every kid in the world ignores completely. In Rubank there are just two pages of that, which are actually useful, covering grip, explanation of a roll (double stroke only), and a table of rhythm values and time signatures. 

The suggested right hand grip is interesting, a Moeller type grip with the fulcrum in back:

Then is the main body of the book, starting with four very useful pages of four measure rhythm studies, in 4/4, 2/2, 3/4, and 6/8 time. Then sections on 5, 7, and 9 stroke rolls, flams, and dotted notes, with more short studies— about 16 pages of those all together. All have stickings and counts marked in.  They're well graded and presented— better for younger students than Peters, or the Vic Firth and Roy Burns methods, which I have also used. 

It's a pretty quick introduction to the rhythms and time signatures they'll be playing in band class, with the more serious technical practice dedicated to rolls— that will be the hardest part for the target age group. The flam pages are good, and not over-technical.  

There's not a lot of verbiage, and what there is is pretty concise, even if it's not always phrased in a way that will be clear to students. But the point of that is not just for the student to read it and understand it immediately— it's more about giving the teacher the major points to re-explain to the student until they get it. 
 

There are pretty useless sections covering the bass drum, and some other band percussion instruments— cymbals, triangle, castanets, tom tom, woodblock, tambourine. And several pages of percussion parts for Rubank band pieces. 

There are eight OK pages outlining the 26 snare drum rudiments, and a few extra variants. Most are written in quarter notes, 8th notes, and 16th notes, and with roll notation, if there are rolls involved. The author wants us to play them slow to fast— all are marked with an accelerando— which I don't agree with. Acceptable, better than the usual single page list of rudiments.

The Intermediate book was written Robert Buggert, who has his own very old snare drum method book, that is pretty good, and long out of print. The intermediate Rubank book is all performance pieces for band percussion section— solo snare drum, snare and bass drum, full section. And a few band pieces. It's dated, and not real useful to me. There's also an advanced volume that I haven't seen yet. 

The elementary volume, even as it's pushing 90 years old, is still a pretty good first book for students in the 8-12 year old range. The roll section is a little out of balance for that age group, but rolls were important for that time and setting. Rudiments are covered but not over emphasized— it's not a hard core rudimental book a la Haskell Harr. It's a good overview of what a snare drummer, and band drummer, is. I'll probably use this with some younger students mainly for the rhythm portions.