PAS #30 · Flam rudiments
Flam Drag
6 main strokes, 6 grace notes over 2 beats. Read it, hear it, and slow it down until it is even.
lR rrL R rL llR L
Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are the quiet grace notes of a flam or drag.
What the flam drag is
A triplet made of a flam, then a drag, then a single stroke — the one rudiment on the list that puts both kinds of ornament in the same group.
How to practice it
- A flam, then a drag, then a tap — three notes per beat with two different ornaments.
- Keep the drag grace notes low and close to the main note, like a quick buzz.
- Practice the flam and the drag separately at the same tempo before combining them.
Where it leads
The flam drag belongs to the flam rudiments family, and it feeds directly into the ratamacues and other mixed-ornament rudiments. Get it even at a slow tempo before you move on — every rudiment built on top of it inherits whatever unevenness you leave here.
Reading the notation above
Both hands play the snare drum, so every notehead sits in the third space of the staff and the sticking letters underneath tell you which hand plays which note. Capital letters are full strokes; small letters are grace notes. The small noteheads with a slash through the stem are the grace notes of the ornament — they are played almost simultaneously with the note that follows, not as separate beats. The marks above the staff are accents: hit those notes harder. Full details in the drum notation guide.
Rudiment data last updated . Every diagram here, in the printable PDF and in the chart image comes from one dataset, so the paper and the screen cannot disagree.