I have another post about The Other 26, which are a set of rudiments that I compiled from American history, which are not listed on the NARD 26. That is a completely separate set from what I will discuss here. This article below is about other sets of 26 rudiments that were historically listed together and NOT my modern compilation. Different thing entirely. Please regard the two articles as unrelated.

Since the 1930s publication of the National Association of Rudimental Drummers 26 Standard Rudiments, it has been fairly self-evident which rudiments are meant by the phrase “the 26 rudiments.” I say, “fairly self-evident,” because it isn’t 100% universal, but most drummers agree, mostly. Before the formation of NARD in 1933 here was actually a lot of dissent over which rudiments were important, but more relevant here, which rudiments were “the 26 rudiments.” People talked about “the 26 rudiments,” with authority but they were not always talking about the same NARD set that have been widely known for 9 decades. It was not a specific set of 26, but more of a general feeling that something close to 26 was the “right” number. This obsession with the number superseded the exact rudiments in the list.

One of the first methods to come close to this magical 26 number was Ashworth in 1812, who had 23 rudiments, or maybe 29 if you count some of the weird stuff, like the Poing Stroke. Rumrille and Holton also had 29-31 ish in 1817, again with some oddball things that we might not call a rudiment, today. These were in the ballpark, but not “the 26.”

Giuseppe Tamplini published a manual sometime in the middle of the 1800s* with exactly 26 rudiments. Tamplini was British and, as such, he separated Close Flams and Close Drags from Open Flams and Open Drags in a way that Americans would not do in the 21st century. As a non-American publication, its hard to assume that the American fascination with 26 rudiments came directly from him, but he may have been influential.

*Tamplini died in 1888, and so his book must be from before that, but we simply don’t know. Estimates range from 1850 to the 1880s. His fife and flute books have been variously estimated at 1850-1870. His bassoon book is mentioned from the mid-1870s. There are mentions of his drum book in other publications in the mid-1880s. Adam Carse in The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz (1976) estimates his whole catalogue of books was published together in 1857. This could mean he published before Strube, discussed below, or perhaps quite a while afterward.

Back in the USA, Gardner Strube’s 1869 rudimental manual had 25 “Lessons” or rudiments in it, which just so happen to be 25 of the eventual 26 NARD rudiments. The 26th is also in there, the Single Stroke Roll, but isn’t given the full title of a “Lesson” and its more of a footnote. 25 rudiments is also sometimes regarded as the “correct” amount of rudiments by other authors, perhaps because of Strube. None-the-less these rudiments would become the NARD 26 some 60-odd years later. George Lawrence Stone, the Stick Control guy, listed Strube’s 26 rudiment as “the original 26 rudiments” in 1931. He simply brushed aside the fact that there are only 25 official rudiments in Strube and used him as the archetypal example of “the 26.” He ignored the other 20ish American drum manuals before Strube, and the hundreds of years of European rudimental drumming. Many other drummers would concur with Stone, assuming that Strube’s 26 were “the 26” before NARD existed. Stone did actually list at least 28 rudiments in his books, meaning he knew about more than 26 rudiments, but those others were not “the 26.”

John Philip Sousa, the march guy, published a book for the Marine Corps in 1886 that contained exactly 26 rudiments, but at least 7 of these rudiments were selections that Strube’s book did not include. Sousa’s rudiments looked more like Tamplini’s British rudiments than Strube’s American set. This is interesting because, as a Marine Corps bandleader and composer of many famous patriotic marches, like “Stars and Stripes Forever,” it is strange that he would use British rudiment names and rhythms over similar American choices. For many drummers between 1886 and the 1930s, Sousa’s 26 rudiments were “the 26.” Several publications in the late 19th and early 20th century were modeled on the British-looking Sousa set, rather than Strube or any other American set. Some of these were official government publications or recommended sources for the Army and Navy and some of these also had exactly 26 rudiments, like Safranek in 1916 or Clappé* in 1921, and others were only close, like Smith/Greissinger in 1897 with 25 or Bower in 1898 with 29.

*Clappé’s book was on wind band transcription, and just happened to list rudiments, so I doubt many drummers saw it. The target audience was composers and bandleaders. The use of exactly 26 is at least somewhat notable. It shows that 26 was regarded as the “correct” amount.

In 1897, Smith an Greissinger published a book, mentioned above, intended for the Army and Navy. Both authors were military bandleaders themselves. Their book contained 25 rudiments, matching the number of Strube’s original 25 official Lessons. The list was nearly identical to Sousa, not Strube, but obviously with one fewer rudiment overall. This was clearly not “the 26,” but the similarity to Sousa and yet the matching number to Strube implies some level of intent.

Returning to England, in 1904, Hawkes and Son published a book with exactly 25 rudiments, Like Smith and Greissinger. Being British, the list was quite similar to Sousa and all his successors mentioned above, though not precisely the same. In c.1908, Fred Poole published a book that also contained exactly 25 rudiments. His had more rolls than Hawkes and fewer drag rudiments. Neither of these was “the 26,” but the fact that they were so similar to Sousa (and others) American list and used Strube’s original number 25, tantalizingly close to 26, is interesting.

Vincent Safranek’s 1916 book, mentioned above, contained exactly 26 rudiments and was intended for military use. Safranek was an Army Bandmaster, so he would have had some real influence on military drumming. His rudiment list was not an exact copy of Sousa, though it was close. The notable difference was the use of the 6 stroke roll instead of the flam and drag paradiddle. His version of “the 26” was probably not as influential as Sousa and certainly less so than Strube/Stone/NARD, but was probably canon for some military drummers in the early 20th century.

In 1925, William F. Ludwig published an article in a Canadian periodical where he argued for the use of rudiments in percussion pedagogy. Apparently, there was a certain set of percussionists at the time who did not practice or acknowledge the benefits of rudiments. Today we have a similar problem. Ludwig did not specify which rudiments he believed were “the 26,” just that there were 26 of them. He may have been aware that there were competing sets and left it vague on purpose. Or perhaps he had a set in mind that he felt were self-evident. Since he was a founding member of NARD, one would assume he agreed with Stone that Strube’s were “the 26.” Later, Ludwig would list 31 rudiments in his 1942 book, so he was aware of others, but did not consider them to be “the 26.” Like Stone, knowing about more rudiments, and publishing them, did not change his view on “the 26.”

Arthur Rackett published a similar article in 1929, arguing for the study of “the 26 rudiments.” Unlike Ludwig, he listed exactly which he meant. His list was very similar to Sousa, though not exactly the same. His 26 included the Three Single Stroke Beat, which is not found in Strube or Sousa. He also listed several extra rudiments that were not part of his list of “the 26,” including the Flamacue, which is a Strube rudiment. His eventual total for the article was 33. So, while he acknowledged that there were at least 33 rudiments worth studying, he was also adamant that “the 26” were the official set and the rest were extra. His list of 26 is not Strube’s list or Sousa’s list, nor Tamplini’s nor Safranek’s for that matter, and he was also clearly using and teaching at least 33 rudiments. It is not immediately obvious why he mentioned the number 26 at all. We must speculate that, like Ludwig above, it was common during his time to talk about “the 26” without specifying the actual rudiments themselves. To go completely out on a limb, it may have been that he was told about “the 26” for his whole drumming career, but the exact rudiments of “the 26” had perhaps never been listed out clearly for him. Like Ludwig, he knew about more than 26 rudiments, but was sure that only “the 26” were officially correct, so he picked 26 to number in his article.

Rackett turned a series of similar articles into a book in 1931. His book contained the same official 26 rudiments, but went on to list more supplemental rudiments, totaling 37 in the end. Some were pretty clearly lifted from Moeller’s 1925 book, which had 41 rudiments, and others were taken from as far back as Ashworth in 1812.

Andrew V. Scott published an article in 1929 that listed 25 rudiments, again tantalizingly close to 26, that were explicitly taken from Moeller in 1925. Moeller listed 41 rudiments in total and Scott’s list contains only rudiments that were common to Moeller and Bruce/Emmett, though the latter contained 34 rudiments. This shows that his editing of the list to 25 was a conscious choice, since his source material contained several more that he chose not to repeat.

Some notable jazz drummers, like Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, would base their rudimental instruction on Moeller and not NARD/Strube. Other books mentioned as few as 8-10 rudiments. It was far from universal to have a number even close to 26, or reference the number 26 at all.

For those that did subscribe to a version of “the 26,” that number held a very powerful place in their ideology. Talking about other rudiments was fine, as with Stone, Ludwig, and Rackett, but they could not supplant the chosen 26, whatever that was in their differing opinions. I have another article that discusses other NARD founders in more detail, but several chose to publish or teach rudiments outside of NARD’s “the 26.” Even when disagreeing on which 26, or using more than 26, the number 26 was somehow sacred.

After the foundation of NARD, the Strube/Stone/NARD 26 would dominate percussion pedagogy for many years. This did not totally put an end to the debate over “the 26,” however.

In 1935, just after the formation of NARD, the Marine Corps published a manual that replaced Sousa’s and it listed exactly 25 rudiments. These were the Strube Lessons with no upgraded single stroke. It is possible that NARD’s 26 had an impact on the decision to move away from Sousa’s 26, but also strange that they did not adopt that 26th NARD rudiment. They were content with just 25, though not a very similar list to the other 25 rudiment collections of the British or British-influenced tradition.

In 1962, Roy Burns’s book lists “The Twenty-Six Drum Rudiments,” which one would assume are the NARD set in that time period. They sort of are, but not exactly. He chooses to renumber them so they are not in NARD order, he uses alternative naming conventions for several (such as half drag instead of ruff or compound strokes instead of lesson 25), and he inexplicably substitutes single drag paradiddles and double drag paradiddles in place of Strube’s Drag Paradiddles Nos. 1 and 2. These are similar rudiments, but they both lack the initial single stroke. They are not the same as the NARD sheet. He also mentions several ruffs that are not part of “the 26.” Once again, we have a case of a drummer insisting on 26 but actually listing more rudiments and not agreeing with others on the exact patterns that constitute “the 26.”

As stated above, after NARD published their list of 26, no other list of 26 has been regarded as canonical. NARD supplanted any other 26 with relative ease. Today, even after the rise of the PAS 40, it is still immediately clear that “the 26” are the NARD rudiments, and the PAS sheet indicates which 26 were listed by NARD. On the other hand, it is interesting, and worth noting, that this wasn’t always true. It is also pretty interesting that the number 26 seems to transcend the exact rudiments that make up any given 26 list.

To recap: 26 rudiments, weirdly, was the somewhat standardized number of rudiments well before the NARD 26 were canonized in the 1930s. Tamplini, Strube/Stone, Sousa, Safranek, and Rackett all had lists of 26 rudiments before the 1930s, and none of them agreed on exactly which rudiments were in the “correct” list. Several others had competing lists of 25 rudiments, which is oddly close. The conclusion we can draw from this was not that there were 26 ideal rudiments, just that 26 was widely seen as the “right amount” of rudiments. Oddly, many people agreed that more rudiments existed and were important, but continued to refer to some kind of official 26 (or 25 in some cases). It is still unclear how or why this number became so popular, but it is strongly embedded in drumming culture even today.

I’ll end by quoting Jim Chapin:

“26 is an arbitrary number anyway … several books could be filled with beats that deserve to be called rudiments.”

Metronome, May 1958