The rute is a beater for drums. Commercially-made rutes are usually made of a bundle of thin birch dowels or thin canes attached to a drumstick handle. These often have a movable band to adjust how tightly the dowels are bound toward the tip. A rute may also be made of a bundle of twigs attached to a drumstick handle. These types of rutes are used for a variety of effects with various musical ensembles. A rute may also be a cylindrical bunch of pieces of cane or twigs, bound at one end, like a small besom without a handle, and used to play on the shell of the bass drum

Bass drum

Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...

 in an orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

. Rute are also constructed from a solid rod thinly split partway down.

In orchestral music, rute (or ruthe) first appeared in the music of Mozart, in his opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K. 384 (1782). The setting of the opera is Turkey, and rute were imported from Turkish Janissary music, the martial music of the Sultan's royal guard, very much in vogue at the time. (James Blades

James Blades

James "Jimmy" Blades OBE was an English percussionist.He was one of the most distinguished percussionists in Western music, with long and varied career. His book Percussion Instruments and their History is a standard reference work on the subject Blades was born in Peterborough, England in 1901...

, "Percussion Instruments and their History" 1992) The rute were played by the bass drum player, with a mallet striking the bass drum's head on downbeats and rute being struck on the shell of the drum on offbeats. A typical pattern in this style would generally go, in 4/4 time, boom-tap-tap-tap boom-tap-tap-tap, the taps representing strikes of the rute on the drum shell. Mozart's contemporaries and immediate successors used the rute in a similar fashion for military effect. Mahler's use of the rute broke completely with traditional military writing for the instrument, focusing more on its coloristic possibilities than on the rhythmic role. This application was continued by Edgard Varese in his wildly coloristic use of percussion.

The Rute stick for drum kit is produced by most major drum stick manufacturers such as Vic Firth

Vic Firth

Vic Firth is an American musician and is the founder of Vic Firth Company , a percussion stick and mallet manufacturing company that he started in 1963. The company bills itself as the world's largest manufacturer of drum sticks and mallets...

, Vater

Vater

Vater Percussion is an American drumstick and percussion accessory manufacturing company. It was founded by Clarence Vater, and is currently run by his two grandsons Alan and Ron Vater. Although the company began producing sticks in 1956, it did not officially become Vater Percussion until much later...

 and Pro-Mark

Pro-Mark

Pro-Mark is a Houston, Texas-based American drumstick company owned by founder Herb Brochstein. It is a widely known stick company generally played in drum set, drum and bugle corps and concert bands.-History:...

.

Holding the Beater

The Rute stick is held in the same way as a Drum stick

Drum stick

A percussion mallet is an object used to beat drums and other percussion instruments. Some specialized mallets are called beaters, drumsticks.Note: See Rute .-Drum sticks:...

, and therefore is usually held either with a Matched grip

Matched grip

Matched grip is a method of holding drum sticks and mallets to play percussion instruments. In the matched grip each hand holds its stick in the same way, whereas in the traditional grip, each hand holds the stick differently. Almost all commonly used matched grips are overhand grips...

 or a Traditional grip

Traditional grip

Traditional grip is a technique used to hold drum sticks while playing percussion instruments. Unlike matched grip, each hand holds the stick differently. Commonly, the right hand uses an overhand grip and the left hand uses an underhand grip...

. The "handle" of the rute is the plastic area, as the drum or cymbal is struck with the wooden "rutes" or bundles of wooden stick.

Pronunciation

The word 'rute' is a trap for radio announcers unaware of its German origin, and who therefore assume that the correct pronunciation is 'root'. The final 'e' should be voiced, making the pronunciation 'root-uh'.