Students often ask how to play with brushes on the snare drum. In this drum lesson I’m going to teach you 2 essential brush beats. These are brush beats all drummers should know, especially if you want to play jazz.





Ballad Brush Beat

The first beat is what many band leaders refer to as “stirring the soup.” You’re basically creating circles on the drum head in a stirring motion. For this beat, you move the hands together in an outward, “swimming” type motion.



It’s difficult to describe in words, so I’ve created a video to demonstrate the beat.





The important thing about this beat is that you create a pulse while you’re playing it. This makes the music groove. It gives the band something to play off of.



Practice playing the basic beat and then start experimenting with it. You can create various rhythms as you’re playing the circles, by simply changing the speed and the angle of the brush where ever you want to articulate the beat.



This beat is perfect for ballads. It can also be used for slow to medium tempos. Normally when you play this brush beat you don’t lift the brushes off the head. However, you can lift them sometimes if you need more volume, especially when playing with a big band.

Swing Beat

The second beat is a basic swing beat. This is appropriate for medium and faster tempos.

In this brush beat, the right hand plays the swing rhythm. It starts on the right side of the drum head on 1 and 3. You hit the left side of the drum head on 2 and 4.

The left hand moves in a swishing motion back and forth across the drum head. It starts on the left hand side

of the drum head on 1 and 3. It reaches the right hand side on 2 and 4.

The left and right hands move in opposite directions. This is important because it actually makes the coordination easier.

Again, this is very difficult to explain in writing. Watch the video for a thorough demonstration of each brush beat.





Brush Beat Summary

Most jazz drummers use variations of these 2 patterns quite a bit in their playing. They probably use a few others as well, but these two are the essential brush patterns.

Years ago, at one of his gigs, I asked Tommy Ruskin if I could come to his house for a brush lesson. Tommy was one of Kansas City’s best jazz drummers, and I loved the way he played with brushes. He simply took me over to a drum case, and basically demonstrated the two patterns I just demonstrated in the video. He said that these were basically the only brush beats he ever used.

I came to the conclusion that day, that it wasn’t necessarily important to know 50 different drum brush beats. What was important ultimately was what you did with those beats.

I actually did not learn these beats from Tommy Ruskin. What he did was kind of confirm that I already knew the basic beats, and that I just needed to continue developing my style of playing with them.

I learned these beats originally from a book by Ed Thigpen, called The Sound Of Brushes. Thigpen was a drummer with The Oscar Peterson Trio. It’s a great book, and one I’d recommend, if you want a more in depth study of brushes.



look inside The Sound of Brushes

Composed by Ed Thigpen. For Drumset. Artist/Personality; Method/Instruction; Percussion – Drum Set Method or Collection; Play-Along. Book & 2 CDs. 60 pages. Published by Alfred Music (AP.EL03694CD).