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Playing The Three Camps

Like so many of the 'Drum Beats' for the military in the 1700's, The Three Camps was usually passed on from older drummers to their students by rote. There were a number of publications printed to standardize performance but so many people were illiterate (especially in musical notation) that too many times these pieces would morph into something unrecognizable to the original.
In the mid-1700's The Ashcroft Rudimental School was published and eventually adopted as the official version. My brother used the version found in the Haskell Harr Bk. 1 Snare Drum Method (which closely follows the Ashcroft's version). Like so many drummers in the past I learned it by rote first and used the printed version as reference for later.
I continue to teach The Three Camps by rote and writing out just the # of the rolls.

Samples of the written versions:

I'm sure there are many other ways of writing this solo, but none are the exact way of performing it. The traditional way of playing The Three Camps as played by the famous rudimental champion Frank Arsenault sounds like one continuous roll with accents.
So after over 50 years of teaching this solo, this is how I pass it on to my students:
  1.  I play the solo for them.
  2. I give them a choice of my two written versions to memorize.

        3. I give them a recording of the solo.
        4. After committing it to memory they use the Haskell Harr version for future reference. 





















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