Snare for brushes

StaggerLee

Silver Member
Ok, so a fair while ago i was told by the pearl drummers forum that when playing brushes, your snare doesnt matter, its just the heads and brushes. Fast forward to this past week, where i not only went to go see a gig where the drummer used brushes, but also got the peter erksine dvd, and all actually stated when you use a really nice thin head (all recommended evans j1 etched) the drum produces a lot of tone, and when slapping will create the snare sound associated with hitting with sticks, so in fact the snare choice IS important for this, and an especially resonant drum can be very useful if you want to maximize tone. I dont know why i always thought a snare must be dry and toms must ring for hours, but i did. But i thought id share my findings and see how everyone else thinks?
 
Offcourse it matters for sound, but whatever setup you have shouldn't keep one from using brushes.

Etched heads offcourse last longer and have more resonance.

It's still a question of taste and also what type of brush playing.

It's as with other styles of drumming with sticks. It depends. What you use for certain soft swing jazz settings might not be what you use in a more contemporary acoustic situation playing beast with the brushes.
 
Ok, so a fair while ago i was told by the pearl drummers forum that when playing brushes, your snare doesnt matter, its just the heads and brushes.

They forgot to mention #1 factor - technique. More important than any snare choice.
 
This is an interesting subject. A "good snare for brushes" depends on what you look for when using brushes. No different to what you look for when using sticks. There is no one brush sound, there is no one brush technique.

The only common denominator is that brushes excite the drum less than sticks, so ask yourself these questions:

Do you want definition of stroke? That is mainly a tuning & head choice thing.

Do you want maximum wire engagement / excitement? That is partially a drum constructional thing, partly a tuning thing, & partly a wire choice / tension thing.

Do you want tone / character? That's definitely a drum construction thing.

1/ A head with appropriate surface & a well tuned instrument will get you that stroke definition.

2/ A drum that delivers a sensitive response (typically vertical grain) allied to shallow beds & appropriate edges will get you there. Add wires that react in the way you wish, & tuning that assists that, & you have a result.

3/ Bringing out tonal character requires a drum that will open up at low dynamic, & deliver a distinctive fundamental with little input excitement.

Everything else is technique.

I hope this helps focus your choices.
 
Probably the best brush-playing album of all time is Dave Brubeck's Time Out with Joe Morello laying it down (an obvious choice here). And he used a Ludwig 5x14 Super-sensitive to do most of his work then (he probably had a Supraphonic as well). You would think with all the great brush playing that's been made over the years it would be obvious that head choice and technique are the real real to having a great brush sound. Most of the master brush players probably only had two choices of snare drum: metal or wood, and most likely 5 inches in depth. If you can't say it on a standard snare with a medium-weight coated head, then you need to do some serious woodshedding.

I love Peter, (and a lot of great players, as a matter of fact), but if being close to this business has taught me anything, it's that you can't really believe any kind of product recommendation made that is said to help you play better. And Peter is kind of a charlatan in a way, considering he's changed drum companies several times already, and has just recently switched back to Remo heads too. And in his last YouTube video, he was raving about how the Remo heads now speak to him better than they used to. Other players have left Remo due to "quality issues" too - and both of these are legitimate concerns.

Getting back to Peter, if he were to talk about some of his favorite recordings he's made over his expansive career (and I'm sure somebody has already done an interview with him on the subject somewhere) I doubt the equipment he used is even going to come up - the man sounds awesome on anything he plays.

I would just strongly suggest discovering what works for you, but developing your technique to a point to where it doesn't really matter what you're playing on because technology is changing all the time - there's always going to be something out there that makes you play better.
 
Technique is by far the biggest factor. A great brush player will make any drum with a coated head sound great. A lot of players back in the day tuned their batter heads down quite a bit when playing brushes. That was part of the sound. 15" drums are good for brushes.
 
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