Brushes are wire-bristle implements you use instead of sticks for quiet jazz, especially ballads and accompaniment behind a vocalist or solo instrument. They produce two completely different sounds depending on what you do with them: a tap, where you strike the head like a stick, and a sweep, where you drag the bristles across the head in a circular motion to create a continuous shhh.
Conventional drum notation can't really capture brush playing. The sweep has no attack to notate; it's a continuous sound. The tap can be notated, but without the sweep underneath it the notation is misleading. The exercises below notate the LEFT-HAND tap pattern only; the right-hand sweep is described in prose in each tip and you should imagine the sweep continuing through every bar.
The Two Hands Do Different Things
This is the central thing to internalise about brushes: the right hand and the left hand are doing fundamentally different actions. The right hand sweeps in a slow circular pattern on the snare head, never lifting, producing a constant low shhh. The left hand taps, just like it would with a stick, marking the time on top of the sweep. Both hands on the same drum, doing different jobs simultaneously.
The Sweep, in Words
Hold the brush in your right hand the way you'd hold a stick — but don't lift it off the head. Move your hand in a flat circle on the snare, the bristles dragging across the surface. The circle should take one full bar (four beats) to complete. Counterclockwise is the most common direction for the right hand. The contact pressure is light — you're brushing, not scrubbing. Practice the sweep alone for two minutes before doing anything else; it should sound like a soft, even cymbal wash that never stops.
(There are many variations on the sweep — figure-eight patterns, sweeps that move toward and away from you, sweeps that change direction with the form — but they all build on this basic circular sweep. Master the circle first.)