Album 1: Percustart is a broad survey course for beginners, covering snare drum, drumset, marimba, vibraphone, timpani, and congas. In each section, the author focuses on a different instrument, offering basic exercises and warmups coupled with a short solo or etude. The exercises give a cursory introduction to the techniques used in the etudes, and each chapter contains two etudes of increasing difficulty.

The snare drum chapter includes exercises that quickly move through alternating strokes, buzz rolls, flams, and three- and four-stroke ruffs. Sticking is indicated through the French system of open and closed squares (for right and left hand, respectively). This could be a good method of acclimating students to this notation system, which is used in many famous snare drum solos and etude books (e.g., Douze Etudes by Jacques Delecluse and Snare System by Frederic Macarez). The two solos are of varying difficulty levels, with the first utilizing only single strokes and buzz rolls, while the second incorporates flams, three- and four-stroke ruffs, meter changes, and metric modulation.

Two chapters are dedicated to mallets, the first with two-mallet exercises and the second with four-mallet exercises. In the two-mallet chapter, the exercises progress rapidly from short scalar passages to double-stop rolls. Sticking choices are designated in the etudes just as they had been in the snare exercises. The four-mallet chapter moves through the several main stroke types (double vertical, single independent, single alternating, and double lateral) as well as pedaling and dampening. The solos are again of tiered difficulty in both chapters and can fit easily on a 4.3-octave marimba.

The drumset chapter has exercises leading up to two etudes. The first is a basic rock groove with a few moments of open solo, while the second solo is much more difficult, utilizing the techniques introduced in the second level of exercises (open and closed hi-hat, linear-style writing, offbeat hi-hat patterns, etc.). Both solos and exercises incorporate improvisation, which is something often missing from beginning drumset books.

The timpani chapter is the most demanding. The first round of exercises, all with sticking patterns written out, move through basic alternating patterns into muffling and metered roll exercises. The first etude has a wide range of dynamics and tempo changes, with quick rhythmic passages and rolls. The second set of exercises and etude are much more challenging, incorporating tuning changes, quick shifts around the drums, fast dampening passages, polyrhythms, and metric modulations.

The conga chapter introduces the basic strokes: heel/toe, bass, open, and slap. The exercises take the player through a wide variety of combinations of these strokes, developing each individually before testing the player’s transitions between sounds. As the exercises get more difficult, the author also incorporates a second conga. All exercises are clearly marked with the stroke type and which hand to use. There is only one etude in this chapter, in which the author crafts a solo around basic conga patterns in both straight Latin and swing styles.

While labeled as introductory level by the author, this collection would be better suited to an advanced high school student or beginning college student. The etudes are more challenging than the exercises, and the second etude in each chapter is significantly more challenging than the first. As the author suggests, though, this is not meant to be a comprehensive method book and should be paired with other instructional materials. With that in mind, it’s a lovely survey of a variety of different instruments. Each chapter has a little nugget of technical/maintenance trivia for the corresponding instrument — pictures of baroque timpani, a comparison of register for different keyboard instruments, diagrams of where to strike cymbals, and a lug tuning scheme for snare drum.