Actual drum brushes

Two days ago I became curious about the origin of "brushes" for drumming.

I did a bit of a web search, which turned up the  history of "drumming brushes", contained in this very informative article.  Apparently they were actual wire flyswatters (fan-shaped, rather than square-shaped); and also people used whisk brooms.

(As an aside:  oddly, you can't find whisk brooms here in Australia.  Duunno why.)


Anyhow, I became curious as to whether "actual" brushes would work -- so I picked up a pair of dish-scrubbing brushes, and a pair of grout-scrubbing brushes, and gave 'em a try.  Here's the Y'allTube video clip:




BTW, here's the drumhead, which a few years ago I let my daughter decorate with permanent markers.

And, here's the drumhead with the brushes on it:

I'm pleased with how my experiment turned out.  Cost me about ten bucks, all said:  $2 each for the dish-scrubbing brushes, and $3 each for the grout-scrubbers.  That's a reasonable price to pay to satisfy my curiosity -- and expand my range of possible drum sounds.  :)


--GG