Make your own drum brushes

Gratuitous picture of our lovely puppy.

Drums can be expensive. I've found a fair few cheapies on eBay over the years but I haven't bought any new drums for 12 months now.

Some of my clients have been with me a long time, and have played each of my drums several times. It's important to keep our music-making fresh, and I find that managing to extricate new sounds from old instruments is one of the best ways to do this.

And one of the easiest ways to do this with a drum, is to change what you are beatin' it with.

Hands and fingers are the best, but that's not always right for some people. Beaters of all shapes and sizes are great, but for a real change in the timbre of your drum, why not try a pair of brushes? And by that I DON'T mean the 20-quid-a-pop wire "jazz" brushes. Lovely though they are.

I saw this video featuring the wonderful French percussionist, Steve Shehan:



I was so intrigued by Shehan's use of household (?) brushes with which to play his Remo djembe that I decided to have a go at making some of my own. I live on a part of the South Coast of the United Kingdom that's unusually balmy, and we can grow palm trees here. Those palm trees provided the raw materials I needed.

Other equipment: One pair of wire cutters; some garden wire; one pair of kitchen shears; one pair of pliers; one mischievous puppy to battle for possession of the palm fronds.

Palm fronds - about ten, gripped in the middle and then folded over.

Cut away the parts you don't need.

Bind the folded-over bit with plastic coated garden wire (though I might also use hefty plastic cable ties in the future. I LOVE hefty plastic cable ties.) Tuck the end of the knotted part into the bundle.

Get a cup of tea before you start the next bit. It can be a little tedious.

Fray the ends of the cut palm fronds. They come apart pretty easily with a bit of persuasion. The further down towards the tie you separate them, the more flexible they are. The thinner the frays, the softer the brush feels (and sounds). I hold the brush between my knees for this bit, to leave both hands free.

Once suitably frayed (my nerves and the fronds), I beat the living crap out of the new brush on the side of our stone table. This is a taster of what it might be subjected to in the future, and it also helps soften the fibres. If any bits of palm want to break away, then this is their opportunity to escape from the rest of the brush. I do not mourn their passing. They distract the puppy.

I give the new brush a bit of a short-back-and-sides with the kitchen shears, hoping no one wants to use said scissors to joint a chicken that evening. Eeeek.

 Then I wrap the lower part of the brush with duck tape - called gaffer tape in some professions - to form a handle. Et voila.

What's your favourite home-made instrument story?